tihvavy  of  trhe  trheolo^ical  ^tmimvy 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

The  Estate  of  the 
Rev.  John  ^.  Wiedinger 

BV  4241  .L3  1916 

Law,  Robert,  1860-1919. 

The  grand  adventure 


THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

ROBERT       LAW.         D.D. 


'^"^"^^ 


3 


THE 
GRAND    ADVENTURE 


AND  OTHER  SERMON 


By 
ROBERT  LAW,  D.D. 

KNOX    COLLEGE,   TORONTO 

AUTHOR    OF    "  THE    TESTS  OF   LIFE," 

"  THE  EMOTIONS   OF    JESUS,"     ETC.,    ETC. 


HODDER  &  STOUGHTON 

NEW  YORK 

GEORGE   H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1916,  by 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


PRINTED   IN   THE   UNITED    STATES   OF   AMERICA 


TO    MY 

SOLDIER-SONS, 

ROBERT,    RALPH    AND    RONALD, 

AND 

THEIR  COMRADES  IN  THE 

I9TH  AND  THE  187TH  BATTALIONS,  C.  E.  F, 


y^ 


PREFACE 

Of  the  sermons  contained  in  this  volume,  those  which 
have  been  preached  during  the  period  of  the  War 
endeavour  to  treat  of  some  of  its  aspects  and  lessons; 
but  it  is  not  specifically  a  volume  of  War-sermons. 
All  of  them  are  published  practically  as  they  were 
preached,  no  attempt  having  been  made  to  modify  the 
style,  which,  as  I  am  aware,  is  better  adapted  to  the 
pulpit  than  to  the  printed  page.  For  the  publication 
there  is  the  usual  excuse,  that  it  has  been  urged  upon 
me  by  many  to  whose  wishes  it  is  a  satisfaction,  if 
not  exactly  a  duty,  to  defer;  to  which,  I  acknowledge, 
must  be  added  the  special  pleasure  afforded  by  the 
dedication. 

Robert  Law. 


vn 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  God's  Wrestling 13 

II.  The  Law  of  Non-Resistance 25 

III.  The  Law  of  Stewardship 39 

IV.  Politics  According  to  Christ. 52 

V.  Why  Hast  Thou  Forsaken  Me? 66 

VI.  It  Is  Finished 76 

VII.  Into  Thy  Hands 87 

VIII.  Strength  and  Beauty 99 

IX.  The  Pattern  of  the  Web 112 

X.  The  Court  of  Appeal 125 

XI.  Providence  in  the  Fall  of  a  Sparrow..  137 

XII.  A  Tragedy  of  Blunder 149 

XIII.  The  Wonder- Working  God 161 

XIV.  The  Fall  of  Jericho 173 

XV.  Cain  and  Christ 185 

XVI.  The  Blood  of  Abel  and  the  Blood  of 

Christ 196 

XVII.  The  Grand  Adventure 208 


IX 


THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 


THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 


God's  Wrestling 

And  Jacob  was  left  alone;  and  there  wrestled  a  man  with 
him  until  the  breaking  of  the  day. — Gen.  34:  24. 

Jacob's  life  is  the  story  of  a  sin,  a  retribution  and  a 
repentance.  It  begins  with  his  heartless  betrayal  of 
his  brother  and  infamous  deception  of  his  blind  old 
father,  a  sin  which  we  see  steadily  tracking  him  down 
through  long  years  of  trouble  and  sorrow.  Twenty 
years  have  passed  since  he  did  the  evil,  and  one  might 
have  imagined  that  its  full  harvest  of  consequences 
would  have  been  reaped  long  ere  now.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  crop  was  lustily  growing,  and  was  still  far 
from  ripe.  At  first  the  antagonist  standing  in  Jacob's 
way  was  only  Esau  vowing  vengeance;  now  it  is  Esau 
at  the  head  of  four  hundred  men.  But  first  of  all 
and  last  of  all  it  was  God.  Jacob  did  not  recognise 
this.  He  thought  still  that  it  was  only  Esau  and  his 
four  hundred  he  had  to  reckon  with;  and,  after  the 
first  moments  of  alarm  and  depression,  he  felt  little 
doubt  of  his  ability  to  circumvent  that  obstacle.     He 

.     13 


14  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

could  count  upon  his  brother's  impulsive  temperament. 
Prepare  the  way  by  sending  some  handsome  gifts  in 
advance ;  follow  these  up  with  eloquent  apology,  humble 
submission,  and  touching  appeal,  and  all  would  be  well. 

In  this  mood,  feeling  as  self-complacently  as  ever 
how  much  more  than  a  match  he  is  for  the  strong- 
handed  but  slow-witted  Esau,  and  confident  of  the 
success  of  his  well-laid  plans,  Jacob  takes  his  staff  in 
hand  to  ford  the  stream  and  enter  the  Promised  Land, 
when  suddenly  he  finds  himself  arrested.  The  form 
of  a  man  steps  out  of  the  darkness  and  seizes  him 
in  a  grip  of  iron,  inexorably  blocks  his  way,  foils  all 
his  efforts,  until  the  self-confident  pertinacious  man 
who  thought  he  had  but  to  "cover  Esau's  face"  with 
a  gift  and  go  on  his  way,  triumphing  in  his  diplomacy, 
falls  at  the  feet  of  his  mysterious  foe,  crushed  and 
helpless.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  Jacob  feels  what 
it  is  to  have  come  to  an  end  of  all  resources,  to  be 
held  in  a  grasp  against  which  it  is  vain  to  contend; 
and  when  the  agony  of  the  long  struggle  ends  in  his 
utter  collapse,  in  that  moment  Jacob  dies ;  the  self-will 
and  self-confidence,  the  Jacob-nature  in  him  expires. 
The  sinew  of  his  strength  and  pride  is  withered.  He 
is  a  man  broken  in  spirit,  who  will  never  again  be  what 
he  was,  but  will  walk  through  life  with  the  conscious- 
ness that  there  is  something  in  the  world  which  is  not 
pliable  to  his  will,  a  righteousness  he  cannot  evade,  a 
power  in  whose  hands  he  is  nothing. 

But  mark  what  follows.  Jacob's  antagonist  becomes 
the  angel  of  blessing.  In  the  moment  in  which  he 
falls  he  catches  sight  of  the  calm,  compassionate  face 
of  his  adversary;  and  in  that  moment  the  vanquished 


0 

GOD'S  WRESTLING  15 

wrestler  changes  his  attitude.  When  a  man  can  no 
longer  wrestle  and  contend  in  his  strength,  he  can 
still  cling  in  his  weakness;  and  as  a  terrified  child 
clasps  its  arms  tightly  around  its  father's  neck,  so 
Jacob  clings  to  his  conqueror.  With  sobs  and  en- 
treaties from  the  broken  heart  of  a  strong  man  he 
cries,  "I  will  not  let  thee  go,  except  thou  bless  me." 
It  is  the  grand  turning-point  of  Jacob's  life.  "Dis- 
armed of  all  other  weapons,  he  at  last  finds  and  uses 
the  only  weapons  with  which  God  is  conquered" — the 
weapons  of  conscious  weakness  and  sinfulness  and 
utter  need.  Face  to  face  with  God,  hanging  helpless 
with  his  arms  around  him,  he  finds  in  surrender  the 
blessing  he  could  never  win  by  native  craft  and 
strength ;  for  we  read,  He  blessed  him  there.  Brethren, 
it  is  this  that  wins  our  battles  with  God;  not  our 
riches,  but  our  poverty ;  not  our  fulness,  but  our  need ; 
not  our  wholeness,  but  our  brokenness.  A  broken 
and  a  contrite  heart  the  Lord  will  not  despise. 

This  picture  from  Jacob's  history  is  a  wondrous 
parable  of  life;  and  many  of  you  see  something  of 
your  own  experience  mirrored  in  it.  In  one  way  or 
another  God  is  wrestling  with  us  half  the  time:  that 
is  why  life  is  often  so  hard,  why  we  suffer  so  many 
blows  and  falls,  so  many  disappointments  and  defeats. 
God  wrestles  with  men  in  all  that  we  comprehensively 
call  trouble.  The  first  thing  trouble  does  is  to  pull  us 
up  sharply  as  you  check  a  horse  upon  the  curb,  to 
remind  us  convincingly  that  there  is  another  will  than 
our  own  at  work  in  our  life.  Is  not  that  always  the 
first  effect  of  the  shock  of  trouble?  Like  Jacob  we 
lay  our  course;  we  live  to  do  our  own  will  and  carry 


i6  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

out  our  own  plans.    We  launch  out  upon  the  sea  of  life 
knowing  that  the  voyage  is  not  without  its  hazards, 
that  there  are  rocks  and  shoals  ahead;  but  we  are 
tolerably  confident  of  our  own  power  to  give  these 
a  wide  berth,  while  we  steer  steadily  for  our  goal. 
But  by-and-by  God's  storm  comes  down  and  shocks 
us  into  reality.     We  learn  that  this  sea  of  life  on 
which  we  are  sailing  is  not  our  sea,   made  just  to 
float  our  vessel  and  carry  it  whither  we  desire;  that 
ours  is  not  the  governing  will.     The  seriousness,  it 
may  be  the  aw  fulness  of  life,  meets  us  face  to  face. 
It  is  thus  God  wrestles  with  men;  and  it  is  the  mark  of 
the  value  He  sets  upon  us.   No  one  would  wrestle 
with  a  block  of  wood  or  a  bundle  of  straw,  nor  expend 
his  strength  and  art  upon  that  which  all  his  exertions 
cannot  change  for  the  better.     It  is  because  we  are 
men,  and  because  He  would  make  us  truer,  humbler, 
stronger  men,  that  God  will  sometimes,  as  it  were, 
strip  Himself  for  conflict  with  us  and  wear  us  down 
with  long  exhausting  grapple,  or  lie  in  ambush  and 
spring  upon  us  at  unawares,  and,  turning  against  us 
those  very  things  which  are  our  pride  and  strength, 
beat  us  to  the  earth,  or  touch  us  with  the  finger  of 
some    biting    and    fiery    providence    in    honour's    or 
affection's  most  sensitive  spot.     All  this  He  will  un- 
sparingly do  if  thereby  He  can  make  us  truer,  humbler, 
stronger  men.     Truer  men:  God  wrestles  with  us  to 
bring  us  at  last  to  the  truth,  to  the  knowledge  of  our- 
selves, to  an  end  of  all  prevarication  and  self-deception, 
all   our   playing   hide-and-seek   with   conscience,    our 
parrying   and    fencing  with   reality,    our   ostrich-like 
concealments  from  the  inescapable  hunter  of  our  souls; 


GOD'S  WRESTLING  17 

to  bring  us  at  last,  if  it  may  be,  to  face  the  naked  facts 
about  ourselves  and  our  place  in  God's  universe,  our 
weakness,  our  sinfulness,  our  utter  dependence  of  body, 
soul, and  estate  upon  Him.  Truer  men;  and,  therefore 
humbler  men,  and  then  also  stronger  men.  God  does 
not  wrestle  with  us  merely  to  break  us  down,  to  lay  us 
nerveless  and  paralyzed  at  His  feet ;  it  is  that  at  last  we 
may  come  to  know  Him,  and  understand  that  His 
nature  and  His  name  are  love,  and  cling  to  Him  with 
the  prevailing  grasp  of  our  unceasing  need.  Then 
weakness  itself  is  transformed  into  strength.  It  is  when 
Jacob  is  vanquished  by  God's  wrestling  that  he  first 
rises  to  the  stature  of  princely  manhood.  And  it  is  thus 
God  wrestles  with  you  and  me.  Whatever  cares  and 
crosses,  difficulties  or  sorrows  we  have,  let  us  interpret 
them  thus.  Let  us  treat  them  not  as  mere  lashes  and 
scourges  and  humiliations,  but  as  a  mark  of  that  love  to 
which  our  perfecting  is  an  everlasting  necessity,  of 
God's  resolve  to  fill  our  lives  fuller  of  eternal  good, 
fuller  of  His  perfect  steadfast  will  instead  of  our  own 
wayward  self-will,  fuller  of  His  loving,  holy  spirit 
instead  of  our  own  unloving,  unholy  dispositions,  fuller 
of  His  divine  strength,  fuller  of  Himself.  Let  us 
receive  them  thus,  and  we  shall  bless  God  for  them 
through  endless  ages. 

And  thus  God  is  wrestling  with  mankind  at  the 
present  hour.  It  is  the  hour  of  the  world's  agony, 
the  world's  Peniel,  and  we  are  all  involved  in  it.  I 
pity  the  man  who  is  not  sensible  of  that,  who  can  look 
upon  this  world-tragedy  as  a  mere  spectator,  without 
feeling  that  here  God  is  touching  his  own  soul,  to  re- 
buke, to  purify,  to  emancipate  and  bless;  for  it  is  certain 


i8  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

that  when  this  tribulation  passes  away  it  will  leave 
none  of  us  quite  the  same,  but  either  truer,  humbler, 
stronger  men,  or  else  sunk  more  deeply  in  the  mire  of 
falsehood,  more  selfish  and  callous  and  blindly  un- 
spiritual  than  before. 

I  feel  sure  that  in  this  war  God  is  stretching  out 
his  hand  to  lay  low  some  towering  falsehoods  that 
have  imposed  themselves  upon  the  mind  of  the  modern 
world  and  have  mightily  influenced  its  ideals  and  its 
life.  Let  me  say  that  I  am  no  railer  against  the  modern 
world,  and  take  no  pessimistic  view  of  the  age  in 
which  we  live;  it  is  no  worse,  in  some  respects  it  is 
better,  than  any  that  has  gone  before  it.  But  it  has  its 
own  special  idolatries.  While  the  whole  spiritual  his- 
tory of  mankind  is  a  conflict  between  the  heavenly  and 
the  earthly  in  man,  between  the  life  that  tries  to 
nourish  and  satisfy  itself  with  things  and  the  life  that 
lives  by  its  vision  and  grasp  of  eternal  truths,  that 
perpetual  conflict  takes  fresh  forms  from  age  to  age. 
And  the  form  it  has  taken  in  our  modern  world  has 
been  determined  by  the  dazzling  material  progress 
which  is  its  characteristic,  by  that  advance  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  nature  and  its  powers,  that  human  conquest  of 
earth  and  sea  and  sky,  the  story  of  which  seems  like 
a  marvellous  fairy  tale.  The  world  is  a  far  bigger 
and  richer  world,  a  more  alluring  and  intoxicating 
world,  than  ever  before.  And  we  have  fallen  under  its 
spell;  we  have  taken  this  world  of  things  as  our  por- 
tion, we  have  enthroned  man,  the  modern  man,  as  its 
lord  and  king,  and  this  empire  of  things  we  have 
called  civilisation.  There  is  nothing  we  have  boasted 
so  loudly  of  as   "our   modern   civilisation"   and   the 


GOD'S  WRESTLING  19 

"progressive  spirit"  of  our  age.  These  are  fine  mouth- 
filling  phrases,  and  we  have  not  inquired  too  anxiously 
as  to  what  we  meant  by  them.  Civilisation  of  what? 
Progress  to  what  end? 

Yet  there  are  some  unsophisticated  people  who 
always  know  what  they  mean  and  can  tell  their  mean- 
ing in  plain  words.  Some  time  ago  I  received  a  letter, 
the  most  extraordinary  and  the  most  instructive  I 
have  ever  received.  It  was  a  criticism  by  a  visitor  to 
this  city  upon  a  sermon  I  had  preached  upon  the 
Supremacy  of  Jesus  Christ;  and  although  it  was  evi- 
dent that  the  writer  had  not  heard  the  sermon,  the 
criticism  was  none  the  less  genuine  and  sincere.  *'J^sus 
Christ,"  said  the  writer.  *'What  did  Jesus  Christ  ever 
do  for  mankind?  What  did  he  ever  do  to  lighten  the 
burden  of  human  toil  by  the  invention  of  labour-saving 
machinery?"  There  you  have  the  baldest,  crudest, 
but  the  most  succinct  and  sincere  expression  of  a 
point  of  view  which  has  largely  dominated  the  modern 
world  and  by  which  we  are  all  apt  to  be  unconsciously 
influenced.  We  have  thought  of  civilisation  as  a  great 
network  of  inventions  wrought  out  by  human  ingenuity 
to  lighten  the  burden  of  human  toil  and  increase  its 
output;  to  make  travel  and  transportation  easy,  to 
make  people  richer  and  healthier  and  more  comfort- 
able. When  we  think  of  progress,  we  think  of  more 
railways  with  faster  trains  and  more  luxurious  dining- 
cars,  cities  with  bigger  populations  and  booming  trade, 
with  mills  and  factories,  hotels,  universities  and  hos- 
pitals, on  a  more  stupendous  scale.  We  silently  assume 
that  civilisation  has  as  its  components — steam,  elec- 
tricity, telephones,  automobiles,  villadoms.  We  expend 


20  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

our  awe  and  admiration  upon  mighty  engines,  leviathan 
steamships,  colossal  feats  of  engineering,  incredible 
ingenuities  of  mechanism — the  works  of  man's  hands; 
and  it  is  in  looking  to  the  arts  and  sciences,  rather 
than  in  looking  unto  God,  that  we  find  our  most 
sanguine  anticipations  of  the  future.  What  may  not 
some  further  discover}^  some  new  way  of  harnessing 
nature's  power  to  man's  convenience  and  comfort,  do 
to  transform  the  world  ? 

And  what  is  the  presupposed  end  of  this  progress? 
Is  it  to  make  man  a  nobler  being  than  he  is  ?  I  think 
I  hit  the  mark  when  I  say  that  it  is  to  make  him  a 
more  comfortable  being.  The  ideal  of  a  great  multi- 
tude of  people  to-day  is  neither  excessive  wealth  nor 
riotous  living — they  know  that  the  millionaire  never 
does  get  value  for  his  millions,  and  for  the  swine- 
troughs  they  have  no  relish — it  is  just  comfort,  solid, 
material  comfort.  They  have  come  to  regard  any 
conditions  of  life  which  involve  discomfort,  not  to 
say  privation  or  pain,  as  almost  the  greatest  of  evils. 
To  have  every  convenience  at  one's  command,  to  live, 
work,  eat  and  sleep  comfortably,  and  to  be  well  pro- 
vided for  the  future  continuance  of  these  blessings — 
this  is  the  ideal  life.  Nor  is  it  necessarily  a  selfish  ideal. 
Loving  comfort  ourselves,  we  wish  others  to  be  com- 
fortable also.  We  do  not  like  to  see  Lazarus  at  the 
gate;  it  hurts  our  humane  feelings.  But  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  the  real,  though  unavowed,  idea  many 
people  have  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  just  the  uni- 
versal diffusion  of  comfort.  When,  by  the  completer 
annexation  of  nature  and  the  better  organisation  of 
society,  every  one  has  a  comfortable  home  to  live  in 


GOD'S  WRESTLING  21 

and  three  comfortable  meals  a  day,  the  millennium 
will  have  arrived.^ 

And  in  a  world  possessed  by  such  thoughts  and 
ideals  God  lets  loose  this  devastating  whirlwind  of  war. 
The  irony  of  it !  the  awful,  loving  irony !  God  is  saying 
to-day :  ** You  shall  learn  what  this  unspiritual  civilisa- 
tion, this  civilisation  of  things  and  not  of  soul,  will 
do  for  you.  You  shall  see  how  a  world  that  has  wor- 
shipped the  comfort  of  things  shall  by  the  very  objects 
of  its  idolatry  be  filled  with  pain  and  privation, 
watered  with  tears  and  blood.  You  shall  know  how 
such  a  civilisation  defeats  itself;  how,  leaving  the 
heart  of  life  unchanged,  it  turns  its  gifts  and  powers 
to  self-destruction;  how  in  peace  it  breeds  corruption; 
how  in  war  it  can  muster  not  armies  but  nations,  not 
nations  but  empires,  for  mutual  slaughter;  how  it  can 
mine  the  seas,  hurl  shells  for  incredible  distances,  add 
to  the  terrors  of  war  the  submarine  and  the  aeroplane, 
but  cannot  tame  human  passion  nor  restrain  its  brutali- 
ties, cannot  teach  men  the  plain  wisdom  of  living  at 
peace  and  seeking  every  man  his  neighbour's  good  as 
the  condition  of  his  own."  In  all  this  is  not  God 
wrestling  with  us?  Is  he  not  showing  by  terrible 
things  in  righteousness  that  an  unspiritual  civilisation 


^Speaking  of  the  Antonine  age  of  Roman  history,  Sir  Samuel 
Dill  has  said :  "A  society  may  be  humane  and  kindly  while  yet 
it  is  worldly  and  materialised.  With  all  its  humanitarian  senti- 
ment and  material  glories,  the  Roman  world  had  entered  on 
that  fatal  incline  which,  by  an  unperceived  yet  irresistible  move- 
ment, led  on  to  that  sterilisation  of  the  higher  intellect  and  that 
petrifaction  of  society  which  ended  in  the  catastrophe  of  the 
fifth  century."  Ominous  words  for  our  own  age,  had  not  Provi- 
dence intervened. 


1Z2  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

can  work  no  essential  change  for  the  better  in  human 
hfe,  that  unless  it  has  in  it  the  Breath  of  God  and  is 
governed  and  guided  by  truth  and  love,  it  is  a  power 
for  evil  more  than  for  good  ?  God  send  that  it  be  not 
in  vain!  Shall  we  not  see  and  understand,  with  a 
new  and  transforming  power  of  conviction,  the  ever- 
lasting truth  that  men  and  nations  live  by  character, 
by  the  faith  that  makes  character,  by  the  Christ  who 
inspires  that  faith?  God  is  wrestling  with  our  souls. 
Shall  we  not  win  the  blessing  He  designs  for  us  and 
become  truer,  humbler,  stronger  men?  Shall  we  not 
get  nearer  to  the  core  of  reality  and  learn  to  live  not 
for  the  little  surface-things,  but  for  the  great,  the 
service  of  love  and  faithfulness  to  God  and  man? 
Only  there  can  we  find  rest  to  our  souls;  and  God  is 
helping  us  to  find  it.  A  few  days  ago  I  had  read  to 
me  part  of  a  letter  from  a  German  lady  whose  brother 
fell  in  one  of  the  early  engagements  of  the  war: 
"Our  brother  has  died  for  his  country,"  the  writer 
said.  "Life  has  suddenly  become  very  simple  and 
very  great."  That  phrase  has  clung  to  me^ — "life 
has  suddenly  become  very  simple  and  very  great." 
Simple?  Yes,  for  the  soldier  and  for  those  he 
leaves  behind  just  one  straightforward  thing  to  do, 
to  go  all  the  way  with  duty,  to  pay  the  full  price,  lay 
all  upon  the  altar.  Very  simple,  and  also  how  great! 
The  heroic  life  is  always  simple  and  always  great, 
because  it  is  not  lost  in  a  maze  of  things  that  are  of 
only  artificial  importance,  but  is  face  to  face  with  the 
supreme  things — God,  Duty,  Life,  Death.  Many  a 
man  in  the  field  to-day  and  many  a  woman  left  at  home, 
who  had  been  fooling  life  away  on  the  trumpery  little 


GOD'S  WRESTLING  23 

things,  have  suddenly  found  it  become  very  simple 
and  very  great.  And  all  of  us,  I  think,  have  felt  a 
little  of  this.  Our  hearts  have  been  purified  by  the 
fire  of  a  great  emotion,  an  intense  feeling  of  devotion 
to  our  country  and  its  righteous  cause,  of  readiness 
to  make  whatever  sacrifices  may  be  demanded  of  us, 
to  place  our  talents,  our  means,  our  lives  if  needed, 
at  the  service  of  the  supreme  duty  of  the  hour.  We 
have  felt  an  expansion,  an  elevation,  an  emancipation 
of  soul.  We  have  been  in  some  measure  liberated 
from  the  bondage  of  the  petty  and  unreal.  Our  little 
personal  anxieties  and  claims  and  grievances  are  for- 
gotten or  recede  into  the  background.  A  great  love 
for  our  motherland  has  swept  away  our  petty  selfish- 
nesses. Life  has  become  simpler  and  greater  because 
we  are  face  to  face  with  a  great  duty  and  with  a  call 
to  great  sacrifice,  and  are  thrilled  t^  a  great  and 
noble  emotion. 

So  far  we  have  proved  that  we  are  "noble  yet.'* 
So  far  we  are  nearer  to  God.  But  when  the  crisis  is 
past,  as  we  pray  God  it  soon  may  be,  will  life  fall  back 
just  to  the  old  level,  into  the  multitude  of  littlenesses 
out  of  which  we  vainly  try  to  make  a  greatness? 
Let  it  not  be  so.  Let  us  get  to  God;  let  us  take  hold 
of  Him  and  like  Jacob  say,  "I  will  not  let  thee  go, 
except  thou  bless  me."  To  the  Christian  life  should 
always  be  simple  and  great.  He  is  a  citizen  of  the 
eternal  commonwealth,  a  servant  and  soldier  of  the 
eternal  King.  He  lives  for  the  interests  and  serves 
the  cause  that  are  eternal  and  supreme.  He  ought 
to  be  and  may  be  every  day  as  free  from  the  world  as 
the  soldier  who  faces  death  on  the  battlefield.     If  we 


24  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

have  come  to  desire  this,  God  has  not  wrestled  with  us 
in  vain.  "If  any  man  thus  thirst,"  Christ  says,  "let 
him  come  unto  Me  and  drink."  He  will  enlighten  our 
darkness  and  show  us  the  way  and  deliver  us  from 
ourselves.  If  He  has  drawn  near  to  you  in  this  hour 
of  worship,  do  not  let  Him  go  until  He  bless  you. 


II 

The  Law  of  Non-Resistance 

Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath  been  said,  An  eye  for  an  eye,  and 
a  tooth  for  a  tooth:  but  I  say  unto  you,  That  ye  resist  not  evil 
(the  "evil  man,"  R.  V.)  :  but  whosoever  shall  smite  thee  on  the 
right  cheek,  turn  to  him  the  other  also. — Matt.  5:  38,  39. 

^Is  it  possible  for  a  man  or  for  a  nation  to  fight 
with  the  approval  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ?  It  may 
seem  late  in  the  day  to  ask  that  question;  still,  it  is 
never  too  late,  it  is  always  timely,  to  look  into  the 
deeper  issues  of  what  is  in  course  of  action.  In  this 
particular  case,  a  study  of  this  passage  should  be  help- 
ful in  making  plain  to  us  in  what  spirit  we  ought  to 
conduct  the  war,  and  what  final  results  we  ought  to 
desire  and  seek  from  it  both  for  ourselves  and  for 
our  antagonists. 

Now  here  our  Lord  inculcates  in  the  strongest  way 
the  duty  of  not  resisting  "the  evil  man."  He  demands, 
or  seems  to  demand,  the  entire  renunciation  of  self- 
defence  and  self-vindication,  of  standing  upon  our 
own  rights  in  any  way.  The  command  is  absolute; 
no  reason  is  assigned  for  it;  but  though  the  duty  is 
stated  as   simply  self-evident,   we   are   compelled   to 


^It  may  be  well  to  say  that,  although  this  sermon  was  preached 
after  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  it  only  embodies  in  less  technical 
form  the  interpretation  of  the  passage  which  I  have  given  in 
my  class-lectures  years  before  the  war  loomed  up  on  the  horizon. 

25 


26  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

admit  that  it  is  far  from  being  so  to  the  majority  of 
men,  or  even  of  Christians.  There  is  no  normally 
constituted  person  whose  conscience  does  not  tell  him 
that  it  is  wrong  to  steal,  wrong  also  to  withhold  from 
a  neighbour  the  help  he  needs  and  which  it  is  in  one's 
power  to  give.  When  Christ  speaks  the  parable  of 
the  Good  Samaritan,  He  speaks  to  the  conscience  and 
the  heart  of  all  men;  but  when  He  demands  that  if  by 
high-handed  violence  one  take  from  you  a  portion  of 
your  clothing  you  are  cheerfully  to  hand  over  to  him  a 
portion  of  the  remainder,  this  seems  to  be  an  entirely 
different  matter.  And  when  the  principle  of  non-resist- 
ance is  literally  interpreted  and  carried  to  its  logical 
issue,  as  by  Tolstoi,  who  tells  you  that  if  you  see  a 
brutal  man  killing  a  child  or  abusing  a  woman,  you 
may  plead  with  him,  you  may  even  interpose  your 
body  between  the  assailant  and  his  victim,  but  one 
thing  you  must  not  do — oppose  him  by  forcible  re- 
sistance and  so  "abandon  the  law  you  have  received 
from  God,"  it  must  be  said  that  such  a  view  of  duty  is 
repugnant  to  the  normal  moral  sense,  and  that,  with 
few  exceptions,  men  would  deny  that  such  a  law  can 
be  the  law  of  God.  And,  further,  we  remember  that 
elsewhere  our  Lord  Himself  speaks  in  a  very  different 
strain.  Equally  authentic,  for  example,  is  the  passage 
in  which  the  Preacher  of  Peace  advises  him  who  has 
not  a  sword  to  sell  his  coat,  if  need  be,  in  order  to 
procure  one.  Jesus  did  not  always  speak  plain  truths 
in  the  plainest  way.  He  did  not  spread  His  gems  on 
the  surface  to  be  picked  up  without  trouble,  but  often 
hid  them  deep,  so  that  men  might  be  compelled  to 
seek  for  them.    But  He  never  leaves  the  seeker  without 


THE  LAW  OF  NON-RESISTANCE        2y 

a  clue;  and  the  clue  He  gives  us  here  is  not  hard  to 
find  and  to  follow. 

He  is  denouncing  retaliation.  These  words  are 
spoken  in  passionate  repudiation  of  the  vindictive 
spirit  expressed  in  the  old  maxim,  An  eye  for  an  eye, 
and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth.  This  was  the  spirit  that 
prevailed  in  the  ancient  world,  both  Jewish  and  Gentile. 
The  great  Roman,  Sulla,^  when  from  his  death-bed 
he  reviewed  his  career,  summed  up  his  good  fortune 
in  this,  that  no  man  had  done  more  good  to  his  friends, 
and  more  harm  to  his  enemies.  The  Jewish  character 
also  had  a  dark,  revengeful  strain  in  it,  as  some  even 
of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures,  like  the  book  of 
Esther  and  certain  of  the  Psalms,  remain  to  show. 
Now  this  spirit  Jesus  utterly  condemns.  He  can  find 
no  words  too  strong  to  express  His  abhorrence  of  it. 
He  sees  in  its  removal,  or,  let  us  rather  say,  in  its 
reversal  a  distinctive  feature  of  the  new  spirit  He  had 
come  to  create  in  the  world.  And  so  true  is  this  in 
fact,  and  so  much  has  it  impressed  mankind,  that  still 
when  we  speak  of  any  one  as  acting  '*in  a  Christian 
spirit,"  we  mean  that  he  has  displayed  in  some  signal 
way  the  power  of  forgiving  injuries. 

Now,  why  is  retaliation  wrong?  Often  men  do  not 
feel  retaliation  to  be  a  crime;  on  the  contrary  they 
often  feel  it  to  be  emphatically  right.  You  have  heard 
men,  and  men  who  were  not  altogether  bad,  make  it 
their  boast  that  they  generally  manage  to  "get  even" 
with  those  who  trespass  upon  their  rights.  You  have 
perhaps   known   men   with    whom    this    principle    of 


1  owe  the  illustration  to  Ecce  Homo. 


28  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

"getting  even"  has  become  a  passion  and  an  obsession, 
men  who  will  wait  and  silently  bide  their  time  for 
years,  until  the  moment  comes  when  they  can  exact 
an  eye  for  an  eye,  or  a  tooth  for  a  tooth.  And  so  far 
from  exciting  a  feeling  of  shame,  this  makes  them  glow 
with  honest  pride  and  self -applause.  It  appeals  to 
something  in  man  which  is  real  and  not  altogether 
bad.  It  gives  a  satisfaction  of  a  kind,  though  a  poor 
and  false  kind,  to  one's  self-respect.  The  person  who 
carelessly  or  maliciously  injures  me  depreciates  my 
personal  worth;  he  treats  me  as  a  person  of  no  conse- 
quence, who  is  weak  and  defenceless  or  pusillanimous 
and  tame-spirited,  and  whose  rights  need  not  be  scrupu- 
lously regarded.  Consequently,  if  I  do  not  retaliate, 
I  seem  to  indorse  this  humiliating  estimate  of  myself; 
while  what  I  naturally  desire  is  to  correct  it  as  speedily 
and  drastically  as  possible. 

It  is  here  that  the  crucial  difficulty  of  Christ's  law 
of  forgiveness  and  non-retaliation  lies.  To  submit 
to  injury  without  effective  protest  is  felt  to  be  weak- 
ness, a  letting  down  of  the  proper  dignity  of  one's 
manhood.  But  the  Light  of  the  world  has  shone  in 
vain,  the  Cross  of  Christ  is  made  of  none  effect,  unless 
we  are  able  to  apprehend  the  utter  falsity  of  this. 
Weakness — to  be  inflamed  with  resentment,  that  is 
weakness.  Humiliation — to  be  so  influenced  by  men 
as  to  repeat  their  injurious  conduct,  that  is  humilia- 
tion. Strength — to  refuse  to  do  wrong  because  an- 
other has  done  wrong,  that  is  strength.  To  realize 
that  no  man  can  really  hurt  you — hurt  your  soul — un- 
less he  can  make  you  hate  him,  that  is  self-respect  and 
self -vindication.    It  is  moral  sovereignty.    "Forgiving 


THE  LAW  OF  NON-RESISTANCE       29 

one  another,"  says  St.  Paul,  "even  as  God  for  Christ's 
sake  hath  forgiven  you."  To  forgive  "even  as  God," 
this  is  the  reproduction,  the  exercise  by  each  in  his  own 
individual  kingdom,  of  God's  own  prerogative  and 
power.    It  is  to  do  what  God  does ;  to  be  what  God  is. 

On  the  contrary,  think  what  is  the  state  of  the 
merely  revengeful  man.  His  revenge  has  no  other 
end  than  self-gratification;  and  the  gratification  it  aims 
at  consists  only  in  the  infliction  of  suffering  upon 
another.  He  finds  his  pleasure  in  another's  pain; 
his  joy  in  another's  grief;  his  triumph  in  another's 
humiliation;  which  is  surely  the  most  devilish  state 
of  soul  in  which  it  is  possible  for  a  human  being 
to  exist.  There  are  optical  glasses  through  which 
objects  are  seen  upside  down;  and  it  is  through  such 
glasses  that  a  man's  soul  looks  when  he  exults  in 
"getting  even"  with  one  who  does  him  a  wrong.  You 
"get  even"  with  him;  that  is  exactly  what  you  do. 
You  get  even — by  descending  to  his  level.  Christ 
bids  you  get  even  in  the  opposite  fashion,  by  rising 
above  him  and  then  helping  him  to  rise  with  you  to 
the  higher  plane. 

For  observe  next,  that  He  does  not  merely  forbid 
retaliation,  but  enjoins  its  opposite.  He  preaches  no 
mere  passive  submission  to  evil;  He  preaches  retalia- 
tion, but  of  an  opposite  kind  from  the  world's — ^to 
turn  the  other  cheek,  go  the  second  mile,  give  one's 
cloak  also.  Mere  passive  submission  may  be  weakness, 
cowardice,  or  phlegmatic  indifference;  it  may  only 
prove  that,  like  Hamlet,  one  is  "pigeon-livered,  and 
lacks  gall  to  make  oppression  bitter."  The  Christian's 
attitude  is  to  be  active,  militant ;  he  is  to  carry  the  war 


30  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

into  the  enemy's  camp,  to  prove  that  love  is  stronger 
than  hate,  generosity  than  greed,  kindness  than  unkind- 
ness ;  to  overcome  evil  with  good.  The  world  had  al- 
ways tried  to  overcome  evil  by  retaliation.  Before 
Christ  came  it  knew  scarcely  another  way  of  treating 
evil  than  by  retribution  and  reprisal.  And  it  was  a  dead 
failure.  It  always  must  be.  The  only  effect  of  retalia- 
tion is  to  multiply  the  amount  of  evil  in  the  world.  It  is 
the  means  by  which  strife  breeds  ever  fresh  strife,  and 
wrong  fresh  wrong;  a  kind  of  diabolical  tennis-match 
in  which  the  ball  of  injury  and  hate  is  hurled  to  and 
fro,  and  which  but  for  the  limitations  of  human  life 
and  resource  would  continue  to  the  end  of  time,  filling 
the  earth  with  the  ever-increasing  reverberations  of  en- 
mity and  violence.  Revenge  fulness  is  a  complete  failure 
for  the  overcoming  of  evil.  It  may  punish  and  even 
crush  the  evil-doer;  but  it  does  not  conquer  him,  does 
not  eradicate  the  evil  principle  from  his  heart,  but 
rather  plants  it  more  stubbornly  there;  it  does  not 
make  him  ashamed  of  his  sin,  does  not  win  him  to 
God  and  good.  Love  often  does,  and  it  is  the  only 
power  that  can.  Let  love  unite  your  soul  with  your 
fellow's  in  bearing  the  burden  of  his  wrong,  and  there 
is  always  the  probability  that  his  soul  will  respond 
and  unite  itself  with  yours  in  repentance.  That  is 
the  amazing  truth  revealed  to  the  world  in  the  Gospel 
of  Christ.  For  the  clenched  fist  it  substituted  the 
pierced  hand.  When  we  smote  God  on  the  one  cheek 
by  our  sin.  He  turned  to  us  the  other  also  on  the  Cross. 
This  is  the  power  God  relies  on  to  change  men's  hearts, 
and  to  set  up  His  Throne  of  Love  within  us.  And  this 
is  the  power  He  bids  us  rely  on  too.     It  may  seem 


THE  LAW  OF  NON-RESISTANCE        31 

foolish  when  love  steps  into  the  arena  to  "fetter  mad- 
ness with  a  silken  thread" ;  but  it  is  the  foolishness  of 
God,  w^hich  is  wiser  than  men.  Love  may  fail — we 
have  no  guarantee  that  it  will  always  succeed — but  we 
must  take  the  risk  of  ingratitude  and  insensibiHty,  as 
God  does. 

It  comes  to  this,  then,  that,  positively,  these  precepts 
of  Christ  indicate  a  special  method  of  applying  the  uni- 
versal principle  of  Love.  And  Love  must  teach  us  how 
to  obey  them.  It  would  be  easy  by  a  mechanical  inter- 
pretation to  push  them  to  practical  absurdity.  By 
giving  liberally  to  every  able-bodied  beggar  who  asks 
an  alms,  would  we  be  acting  for  the  best  interests  of 
society,  or  of  the  able-bodied  beggar  himself?  Would 
a  merchant  whose  shop-boy  is  caught  purloining  from 
the  till  be  well-advised  in  promoting  him  to  be  cashier 
and  giving  him  the  key  of  the  safe?  But,  though  it  is 
easy  to  ask  such  questions,  we  must  on  no  account 
minimize  the  force  of  Christ's  principle.  That  prin- 
ciple is  excellently  stated  in  the  words  of  Bishop  Gore : 
"So  far  as  our  personal  feeling  goes,  we  ought  always 
to  be  ready  to  turn  the  other  cheek,  to  give  without 
desire  or  hope  of  receiving  again.  Love  knows  no 
limits  but  those  which  love  itself  imposes.  When 
love  resists  or  refuses,  it  must  he  because  compliance 
would  be  a  violation  of  love/' 

And  so  we  come  to  the  next  great  question — will 
love  ever  so  resist  and  refuse?  Is  the  turning  of 
the  other  cheek  not  only  one  method,  is  it  the  only 
method  by  which  wise  and  enlightened  love  will  act 
in  seeking  the  highest  good  of  men  and  society?  Are 
w^e  to  take  these  precepts  of  Christ  as  prescribing  an 


32  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

invariable  course  of  action  in  all  circumstances?  Or 
ought  we  to  understand  them  as  enjoining  a  spirit 
which  will  seek  its  end  by  this,  but  also,  it  may  be, 
by  other  methods,  according  to  circumstances? 

We  see  at  once  that  this  is  a  question  of  the  first 
magnitude.  Literally  construed,  our  Lord's  precepts 
have  only  an  individual  reference;  they  prescribe  the 
duty  of  one  person  face  to  face  with  another  person; 
they  do  not  lay  down  any  rule  of  conduct  where  the 
rights  and  interests  of  a  third  party  are  concerned. 
Those  who  find  in  them  a  prohibition  of  all  forcible 
resistance  to  evil,  as  for  example  defensive  war,  in 
order  to  do  so  are  compelled  to  lay  aside  the  canon 
of  literal  interpretation.  They  assume  that  a  society, 
a  nation,  has  a  social  or  national  personality  which 
can  act  and  is  bound  to  act  in  the  same  way  as  the 
individual.  In  other  words  they  assume  that  according 
to  the  teaching  of  Christ,  love  requires  of  us  the 
willingness  to  sacrifice  not  only  our  own  interests  but 
the  interests  of  others  also;  that  I  am  not  only  to  turn 
my  own  cheek  to  the  smiter  but  to  stand  by,  passive, 
forbidden  to  use  more  than  verbal  pleading  and  protest, 
when  I  see  others  smitten  and  robbed.  Now,  without 
arguing  for  the  present  whether  this  is  or  is  not  what 
love  requires,  let  me  point  out  the  vastness  of  the  issue 
raised.  The  question  of  war  is  a  very  small  part  of 
it.  If  it  be  true  that  love  has  only  one  method  of 
dealing  with  evil,  the  method  of  voluntary  submission, 
and  indeed  of  oft'ering  oneself  a  victim  to  redoubled 
injury;  if  it  be  true  that  love  forbids  all  use  of 
physical  means  of  correction  and  compulsion,  this  goes 
down  to  the  foundation  of  all  things,  and  affects  the 


THE  LAW  OF  NON-RESISTANCE        33 

moral  principle  of  all  government,  human  and  divine. 
It  v^ould  declare  everything  in  the  nature  of  punish- 
ment, all  enforcement  of  law,  to  be  immoral.  It 
would  begin  at  the  family.  It  would  mean  that  no 
parent  who  truly  loves  his  child  could  in  any  circum- 
stances inflict  punishment  or  use  his  power  to  enforce 
the  law  of  the  home;  and  even  if  one  member  of  the 
household  should  injure  and  tyrannise  over  another, 
could  never  interfere  between  the  tyrant  and  his  victim 
except  by  tearful  pleading  and  "moral  suasion."  ^ 

And  if  this  were  love's  only  method  of  dealing 
with  evil,  it  would  follow  that  the  State  has  no  moral 
right  to  impose  its  laws,  that  all  punishment  of  crime, 
all  means  used  to  protect  peaceable  and  unoffending 
persons  against  lawless  aggression  are  immoral;  in 
short,  that  the  police- force  and  our  courts  of  justice 
are  the  embodiment  of  a  wholly  unchristian  and  im- 
moral conception  of  society.  So  the  Christian  anarch- 
ist contends.  But,  as  I  have  said,  he  assumes  that  the 
law  of  Christ  not  only  requires  of  us  the  willing  sur- 
render of  our  own  rights  and  interests  whenever  the 
ends  of  love  will  be  promoted  by  our  so  doing,  but 
requires  of  us  also  the  sacrifice  of  the  rights  and 
interests  of  others.  To  represent  this  as  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  is  quite  unwarrantable.  The  State  is 
trustee  for  the  people;  it  exists  to  protect  their  rights 


^A  notable  fallacy  often  lurks  in  the  use  of  this  term,  "moral 
suasion."  It  is  assumed  that  verbal  suasion  is  moral,  which  is 
not  by  any  means  always  the  case;  and  that  suasion  by  physical 
means  is  non-moral,  which  also  is  far  from  being  the  case.  My 
recollection  of  my  boyhood  is  that  physical  correction  led 
swiftly  to  moral  effects,  as  it  was  intended  to  do. 


34  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

and  liberties.  Here  too  the  law  of  Christ,  of  course, 
forbids  the  revengeful  spirit.  All  the  barbarous  and 
ferocious  punishments  of  former  times,  the  unmention- 
able horrors,  which  served  no  other  end  than  the  glut- 
ting of  the  savage  appetite  for  cruelty,  have,  under  the 
influence  of  Christianity,  fallen  into  blessed  desuetude ; 
and  the  conviction  steadily  grows  that  even  for  the 
protection  of  society  the  most  effective  kind  of  penal 
treatment  is  that  which  aims  at  the  reformation  of 
the  offender.  But  that  Jesus  ever  contemplated  the 
handing  over  of  society  to  the  mercy  of  the  criminal, 
or  of  whosoever  has  the  anti-social  instincts  most 
strongly  developed — has  most  of  the  devil  in  him — 
I  do  not  find  the  least  hint  in  any  word  or  deed  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

But  all  goes  back  to  this:  How  does  God,  who  is 
love,  govern  in  His  Kingdom?  This,  which  is  the 
crucial  point  of  the  whole  inquiry,  is  singularly  lost 
sight  of  by  many.  Christ  bids  us  be  perfect  as  our 
Father  in  heaven  is  perfect.  He  constantly  illustrates 
the  moral  nature  of  God  and  the  principles  of  divine 
action  by  their  human  analogies.  It  is  absolutely  funda- 
mental to  the  whole  teaching  of  Jesus  that  man's 
moral  nature  is  the  image  of  God's.  Human  love  and 
divine  love,  human  righteousness  and  divine  righteous- 
ness, are  the  same  in  content  and  character.  What 
is  right  in  God  is  right  also  in  man,  and  what  is  wrong 
in  man  would  be  wrong  also  in  God.  li  this  were  not 
so,  no  real  fellowship  in  spirit  and  in  truth  could  ever 
be  possible  between  God  and  man.  How  then  does 
God  govern  in  his  Kingdom?  Jesus  Christ  has  taught 
us  the  amazing  truth,  that  God's  chosen  and  supreme 


THE  LAW  OF  NON-RESISTANCE        35 

method  of  meeting  evil  is  the  method  of  suffering,  self- 
sacrificing  love,  the  method  of  the  Cross.  But  is  this 
His  sole  method  ?  Has  He  no  others  which  He  uses  as 
auxiliary  to  this,  or  which,  in  the  temporary  or  ulti- 
mate failure  of  this,  He  is  constrained  to  employ  in  its 
place?  There  is  no  room  for  hesitation  in  saying 
what  answer  Jesus  Christ  gave  to  that  question.  God 
is  the  Father  of  spirits  and  seeks  always  to  win  us 
and  rule  us  by  truth  and  grace;  but  nowhere  else 
in  the  Bible,  Old  Testament  or  New,  is  that  fact 
set  more  clearly  side  by  side  with  this,  that  God  is 
also  the  Almighty  Judge  and  Ruler  of  the  universe, 
and  that  He  meets  evil  with  physical  antagonisms,  cor- 
rections and  compulsions,  administered  and  directed 
for  moral  ends.  Whom  He  loveth  He  chasteneth. 
Those  who  are  obstinately  evil  He  punishes,  punishes 
here  and  will  punish  hereafter.  By  His  very  love, 
God  is  bound  to  antagonise  wrong.  His  love  requires 
that  right  shall  be  rewarded  and  wrong  punished; 
this,  indeed,  is  inherent  in  the  very  constitution  of  a 
universe  created  and  ordered  by  love.  And  if  God 
in  His  government  act  thus,  it  follows  that  earthly 
governments  in  their  lower  sphere,  and,  indeed,  that 
each  of  us,  in  so  far  as  he  is  a  trustee  of  the  moral 
order,  must  do  likewise. 

We  come  lastly  to  the  question  of  war.  And  it  is 
very  obvious  that  in  an  ideal  world,  a  really  Christian 
world,  just  as  little  as  there  could  be  either  policeman 
or  magistrate,  could  there  be  international  warfare; 
and  with  the  faith  Christianity  inspires  regarding  the 
future  of  humanity,  it  is  not  extravagant  to  look  for- 
ward to  a  time  when  they  shall  all  have  become  obsolete 


S6  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

together.  As  we  look  back  with  some  astonishment 
to  a  time  when  it  was  thought  that  questions  of  honour, 
as  between  man  and  man,  could  be  settled  only  by 
mortal  combat,  so  a  time  will  come  when  men  shall 
look  back  with  the  same  uncomprehending  amazement 
to  the  dark  ages  in  which  nations  put  to  the  arbitra- 
ment of  the  sword  questions  which  reason  and  con- 
science should  judge  and  decide.  Even  as  a  result  of 
the  present  unparalleled  conflict  we  may  hope  that 
everywhere  the  eyes  of  men  will  be  opened  to  the  sheer 
stupidity,  as  well  as  the  criminality,  of  war;  when  the 
whole  civilised  world  will  be  united  against  war,  and 
one  nation  shall  no  more  dare  to  wage  aggressive  war 
against  another  nation  without  the  certainty  of  pun- 
ishment, than  a  man  in  this  country  can  at  present 
attempt  to  force  the  fighting  of  a  duel  upon  his  neigh- 
bour without  being  locked  up  for  breach  of  the  peace. 
But  we  have  to  deal  with  the  world  as  it  is.  And  that 
the  law  of  love,  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  intends  that  the 
nations  of  the  world  shall  be  at  the  mercy  of  which- 
soever of  them  is  most  selfish  and  conscienceless,  or 
that  all  armed  resistance  to  aggression  and  tyranny, 
and  all  armed  defence  of  a  nation's  life  and  liberty  is 
wrong,  I  can  find  no  ground  at  all  for  believing. 

In  the  world  we  of  this  generation  are  dwelling  in, 
there  is  only  one  really  militaristic  nation,  only  one 
which  proudly  avows  itself  to  be  a  war-state,  which 
believes  that  war  is  a  nation's  business  by  which  it 
grows  strong  and  wealthy  and  morally  great,  and 
which  therefore  organises  its  whole  national  life  for 
war.  And  assuredly  it  is  not  the  will  of  God  that  such 
a  nation  with  such  ideals,  the  ideals  of  the  pirate  and 


THE  LAW  OF  NON-RESISTANCE        37 

the  cut-throat,  should  dominate  the  world ;  and  assur- 
edly it  is  the  will  of  God  that,  when  the  conflict  is 
forced  upon  us,  we  should  do  everything  and  suffer 
everything  to  prevent  this.  The  government  of  a 
country  would  do  as  great  wrong  if  it  sacrificed  the 
rights  and  liberties  of  its  subjects  to  such  a  nation  as 
by  sacrificing  them  to  the  criminal  or  the  madman. 
And  to  say  that  the  soldier  in  such  a  cause  is  a  man 
who  hires  himself  to  kill  is  claptrap  of  the  worst  kind. 
As  well  say  that  a  surgeon  is  a  man  who  hires  himself 
to  wound,  or  that  the  judge  hires  himself  to  hang  the 
murderer ! 

There  is  one  kind  of  war,  and  only  one,  which 
the  law  of  love  will  sanction,  and  not  only  sanction 
but  enjoin — war  which  is  a  weapon  of  righteous- 
ness to  prevent  or  to  redress  foul  international  wrong; 
war  for  the  sake  of  peace  based  on  righteousness, 
its  only  foundation,  not  for  extension  of  territory; 
for  the  punishment  of  evil-doers,  not  for  the  conquest 
of  rivals  in  power;  for  the  establishment  of  free- 
dom, for  the  protection  of  the  weak  and  innocent,  not 
for  oppression  and  the  sating  of  ruthless  ambition. 
Such  is  the  war  we  are  now  waging.  Let  us  wage  it 
in  a  Christian  spirit  of  firm  dependence  upon  God, 
who  has  laid  this  terrible  task  upon  us;  and  without 
malice  toward  the  foe.  In  war  as  in  all  else,  the  one 
thing  the  teaching  of  Christ  forbids  and  the  spirit 
of  Christ  excludes  is  hate,  a  vindictive  disposition 
which  exults  and  gloats  over  the  suffering  and  disaster 
of  others.  It  is  the  melancholy  necessity  of  the  case 
that  we  can  establish  the  right  only  by  inflicting  defeat 
and  immediate  disaster  upon  our  adversary.     It  is  a 


38  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

tragic  business  altogether;  yet  the  tragic  duty  has  to 
be  performed,  just  as  we  have  to  fight  against  the 
hallucinated  fury  of  a  maniac.  But  we  must  have  the 
courage,  and  maintain  it,  not  to  return  hate  for  hate. 
Soldiers  at  the  front  are  too  busy  for  hate;  it  is  the 
civilians  at  home,  as  has  been  truly  said,  waiting  and 
fretting,  who  are  most  tempted  to  hate.  But  the  cause 
we  fight  for  is  an  ideal  which  is  sullied  by  every  hate- 
ful or  savage  thought.  It  would  not  be  worth  fighting 
for  if  it  were  the  cause  of  hate,  if  its  object  were 
revenge.  It  is  because  it  is  not,  and  because  all  the 
world  sees  it  is  not,  that  the  world's  moral  sympathies 
are  with  us. 

And  notwithstanding  all  that  is  happening  in  this 
distracted  world,  and  in  this  year  of  the  Christian  era, 
let  not  the  hope  fail  us  that  God  will  give  increasingly 
to  mankind  that  divine  spirit  which  came  in  Jesus 
Christ  to-  restore  the  world,  that  the  healing  stream 
of  love  which  flows  from  His  Cross  will  yet  turn  the 
wilderness  made  by  human  blindness  and  passion  into 
a  garden  of  the  Lord,  and  the  new  day  dawn  when 
strife  and  sin  shall 

Pass  with  the  stars,  and  leave  us  with  the  sun. 


Ill 

The  Law  of  Stewardship 

And  his  lord  commended  the  unrighteous  steward,  because 
he  had  done  wisely :  for  the  children  of  this  world  are  in  their 
own  generation  wiser  than  the  children  of  light.  And  I  say 
unto  you,  make  to  yourselves  friends  of  the  mammon  of  un- 
righteousness; that,  when  it  shall  fail,  they  may  receive  you 
into  the  eternal  tabernacles. — St.  Luke  i6:  8,  9.     (R.  V.) 

The  account  of  an  ingenious  and  successful  swindle, 
such  as  Our  Lord  gives  here,  seems  a  strange  source 
from  which  to  derive  any  principle  of  heavenly  wis- 
dom. But  it  is  always  permissible  to  learn  some  good 
lesson  from  evil  men.  We  may  admire  and  learn  from 
the  courage  of  a  brigand  or  the  ingenuity  of  a  forger 
or  the  skilful  navigation  of  a  pirate.  We  may  detach 
the  quality  from  the  man  and  from  the  unworthy  pur- 
pose to  which  he  devotes  it,  and  looking  at  the  quality 
by  itself  we  may  receive  instruction  from  it  and  be 
stimulated  to  imitation.  It  is  with  this  purpose  that 
our  Lord  here  relates  the  singularly  interesting  story 
of  a  very  sagacious  though  unscrupulous  man. 

A  certain  rich  man  has  a  steward,  an  agent  or  factor, 
whom  he  has  intrusted  with  the  administration  of  his 
estate;  and  having  reason  to  suspect  the  steward  of 
abusing  his  trust,  he  gives  him  notice  of  dismissal  and 
bids  him  prepare  an  account  of  his  stewardship.  By 
this  unexpected  turn  of  events  the  steward  finds  him- 
self brought  face  to  face  with  a  most  discouraging 

39 


40  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

prospect.  As  he  well  knows,  he  cannot  render  a  satis- 
factory account;  the  loss  of  his  situation  is  inevitable, 
and  he  is  like  to  be  cast  upon  the  world  with  a  dis- 
credited character  and  with  slender  chance  of  ever 
again  being  employed  in  any  position  of  trust.  What 
is  to  become  of  him?  Dig  he  cannot;  a  life  of  ease 
has  unfitted  him  for  hard  manual  toil,  and  from  what 
is  apparently  the  only  alternative  to  this,  beggary,  he 
recoils  in  shame.  But  he  does  not  despair.  He  applies 
his  active  and  resourceful  mind  to  the  solution  of  his 
problem ;  and  soon  he  sees  light  at  the  end  of  the  tunnel. 
I  have  it,  he  exclaims  with  intense  satisfaction,  I  am 
resolved  what  to  do.  The  plan  he  evolves  seems  to  be 
of  this  nature.  He  has  still  one  collection  of  rents  to 
make  before  his  dismissal  takes  effect.  The  rents 
consist  of  a  fixed  proportion  of  the  produce  of  the 
land,  and  therefore  vary  in  amount  from  year  to  year. 
And  when  he  gathers  the  tenants  together  and  ascer- 
tains from  each  what  is  the  sum  due,  as  each  mentions 
the  amount,  he  bids  him  write  so  much  less  in  the 
reckoning,  for  which  he  then,  I  suppose,  gives  him  a 
full  discharge.  Thus  he  secures  the  favour  and  good 
offices  of  the  tenants,  who,  of  course,  are  delighted  by 
this  generous  regard  for  their  interests.  The  whole 
proceeding  is  cynically  dishonest;  but  it  displays  an 
admirable  shrewdness.  The  steward  virtually  steals 
his  master's  money;  but  he  does  not,  as  a  clumsier 
rogue  would,  abscond  with  it  or  squander  it  in  a  final 
bout  of  revelry.  (''Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to- 
morrow we  die").  He  invests  it,  and  he  invests  it 
where  no  legal  writ  can  reach  it,  invests  it  in  friend- 
ship; turns  it  into  a  moral  equivalent,  gratitude.     He 


THE  LAW  OF  STEWARDSHIP  41 

uses  it  to  put  a  number  of  men  under  obligation  to 
him,  and  he  calculates  that  when  he  is  turned  adrift 
the  friendship  of  these  men  will  be  to  him  a  haven  of 
refuge.  It  will  stand  him  in  good  stead;  they  will 
palliate  his  misdemeanours  and  magnify  his  virtues; 
they  will  say  that,  whatever  his  faults,  he  was  a  kindly, 
generous  soul,  always  read}^  to  do  a  poor  man  a  good 
turn,  and  that  the  days  of  his  stewardship  were  the 
best  they  ever  had.  In  the  time  of  his  need  they  will 
receive  him  into  their  houses  as  an  honoured  guest, 
will  speak  well  of  him,  rehabilitate  his  character  and 
possibly  enable  him  to  take  his  place  in  the  world 
again. 

*'Such,"  Jesus  says  to  men,  "is  your  position  and 
your  opportunity  in  this  world.  You  are  stewards  for 
God;  the  day  of  reckoning  is  nigh;  but  a  day  of  op- 
portunity is  still  left  you.  Use  it  wisely.  Make  to 
yourselves  friends  by  means  of  the  mammon  of  un- 
righteousness." ^ 

The  first  truth  here,  and  it  is  one  of  the  first  magni- 
tude, is  that  life  is  a  stewardship;  our  position  in  the 
world  is  that  of  stewards,  God's  stewards.  That  means 
that  our  right  relation  to  everything  we  call  ours  is 
determined  not  by  the  right  of  possession  but  by  the 


^"Mammon"  is  simply  the  Syriac  word  for  money;  but  why 
Our  Lord  calls  it  "of  unrighteousness"  is  not  quite  clear.  May 
it  be  merely  a  transference  of  the  imagery  of  the  Parable  into 
the  interpretation?  (Your  worldly  possessions  are  in  your  case 
the  parallel  of  the  money  which  the  steward  in  the  story  ob- 
tained so  dishonestly  but  used  so  wisely.)  More  probably 
"unrighteous"  here  means  merely  "worldly"  or  "secular."  The 
one  point  of  absolute  certainty  is  that  the  meaning  is  not  that 
ill-gotten  gain  may  be  sanctified  by  being  put  to  charitable  uses. 


42  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

duty  of  administration.  The  steward  is  not  the  pro- 
prietor. The  entire  management  of  the  estate  is  com- 
mitted to  him,  and  to  outsiders  he  may  have  very 
much  the  appearance  of  being  the  proprietor;  but  he 
fatally  deceives  himself  if  he  ever  forget  that  all  that 
is  in  his  hands  belongs  to  another  and  is  his  only  to 
administer,  and  to  administer  not  according  to  his  own 
fancy  or  for  his  own  pleasure,  but  according  to  the 
will  and  for  the  purposes  of  that  other.  This  is  a 
truth  about  human  life  Our  Lord  is  never  weary  of 
reiterating.  His  parables  of  the  Talents  and  the 
Pounds,  of  the  Unjust  Steward  with  its  companion 
picture  of  the  Rich  Man  and  Lazarus,  all  tell  the  same 
story.  In  human  life  there  is  no  such  thing  as  abso- 
lute proprietorship.  There  is  relative  proprietorship: 
there  are  those  things  on  which  we  can  lay  our  hands 
with  the  right  of  indubitable  ownership,  while  we  say 
to  others,  "Hands  off!"  Without  such  right  of  owner- 
ship it  is  evident  that  there  could  be  no  possibility  of 
stewardship — to  abolish  the  rights  of  property  were 
at  the  same  time  to  abrogate  its  duties — yet  all  the 
time  what  we  legitimately  claim  as  our  own  against 
rival  claimants  is  not  ours,  but  is  absolutely  another's. 
The  administration  only  is  ours.  Begin  at  the  foun- 
dation of  things,  with  life  itself,  the  mere  fact  of  our 
active  and  rational  existence:  even  this  being  we  call 
our  own  is  not  our  own.  We  did  not  create  it  or  earn 
it;  it  is  not  ours  by  any  right  of  conquest  or  discovery. 
We  have  none  of  those  prior  rights  to  it  in  virtue  of 
which  men  call  things  their  own.  Our  thought  of 
stewardship  must  begin  with  this  primal  fact — It  is  He 
that  hath  made  us,  and  not  we  ourselves.     God  does 


THE  LAW  OF  STEWARDSHIP  43 

not  come  into  our  lives  claiming  our  allegiance.  God 
made  me,  made  me.  To  him,  moment  by  moment, 
I  am  indebted  for  my  very  existence.  Absolutely  it 
is  His;  it  is  mine  only  as  a  trust,  a  stewardship,  an 
office  rather  than  a  possession.  Life  and  all  that  life 
brings,  powers  of  body  and  capacities  of  mind,  all  its 
possessions  outward  and  inward,  the  Gospel  of  Christ 
and  the  grace  of  God,  all  spiritual  knowledge,  wisdom, 
sympathy,  joy,  are  ours  only  to  administer. 

And  this  administration,  we  are  further  reminded, 
is  temporary.  Our  life  is  merely  a  situation;  our 
position  that  of  a  servant  who  is  in  daily  dependence 
on  his  master's  bidding  to  stay  or  go.  And  in  the  end, 
of  necessity,  stewardship  is  an  office  of  responsibility. 
Swiftly,  day  by  day,  we  are  travelling  on  to  the  un- 
known but  appointed  time  when  a  hand  will  be  laid  on 
our  shoulder  and  a  voice  will  say  in  our  ear.  Give  an 
account  of  thy  stewardship,  for  thou  mayest  be  no 
longer  steward.  It  is  this  that  gives  our  fleeting  life 
its  enduring  significance,  that  makes  it  "solemn  and 
majestic  as  the  portals  of  Eternity."  It  is  this  that 
makes  us  men.  Our  term  on  earth  is  brief;  each  of 
us  is  but  a  drop  in  the  great  ocean  of  humanity.  In  a 
few  years  the  place  that  knew  us  shall  know  us  no 
more.  We  shall  be  of  the  innumerable  and  forgotten 
generations  whose 

Place  in  all  the  pomp  that  fills 
The  circuit  of  the  summer  hills 
Is  that  their  graves  are  green. 

What  importance  then  can  attach  to  our  conduct?  In 
the  end,  can  it  matter  much  what  use  we  make  of 
those  swift  years  which  are  *'as  a  wind  that  passeth 


44  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

and  that  cometh  not  again"?  The  answer  to  such 
questions  is  that  Hfe  is  stewardship,  and  that  steward- 
ship is  essentially  a  responsibility.  Our  books  must 
be  given  up  for  the  final  audit.  Without  this,  life 
would  be  meaningless,  a  race  without  a  goal,  a  drama 
without  a  denouement.  Materialism  may  declare  that 
all  began  in  slush  and  slime  and  that  all  will  return  in 
the  revolution  of  the  Eternal  Wheel  to  slush  and  slime 
again;  but  the  human  heart  has  never  believed  it.  I 
am  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  Beginning  and  the  Ending, 
saith  the  Lord:  that  is  the  note  to  which  our  moral 
instincts  respond.  We  are  responsible,  and  it  is  by  the 
way  in  which  we  fulfil  our  Master's  purpose  now  that 
we  must  stand  or  fall  at  last.  And  we  know  what  that 
involves.  Well  we  know  that  we  are  unable  to  meet 
our  liabilities;  and  that  our  one  hope  must  be  that, 
since  we  cannot  answer  God  as  our  Judge,  we  can,  and 
humbly  do,  flee  to  him  as  our  Saviour  and  cast  our- 
selves upon  the  same  rich  mercy  that  opened  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  to  the  Thief  on  the  Cross.  But  is 
stewardship  abolished  when  we  cast  our  bankrupt  lives 
before  the  Throne  of  Grace?  Nay,  it  only  then  makes 
a  hopeful  and  effective  beginning.  The  parable  of 
the  Prodigal  Son  is  not  the  whole  Gospel.  We  must 
read  on.  The  pardoned  prodigal  who  had  wasted  his 
father's  goods  becomes  the  most  faithful  of  stewards. 
The  law  of  stewardship  never  changes,  the  law  of 
moral  continuity  by  which  the  life  here  is  carried  for- 
ward and  bears  its  fruit  in  the  greater  life  to  come; 
but  when  life  is  inspired  by  the  faith  and  the  hope  and 
the  love  Christ  brings,  this  law  becomes  our  blessing 
and  our  hope. 


THE  LAW  OF  STEWARDSHIP  45 

And  in  this  parable  Our  Lord  teaches  in  a  wonder- 
fully simple  and  beautiful  manner,  how  this  is  pos- 
sible. He  is  speaking  directly  of  the  stewardship  of 
money.  "Make  to  yourselves  friends  by  means  of  the 
mammon  of  unrighteousness."  The  steward  in  the 
parable  was  quick  to  see  that  this  was  the  policy  of 
wisdom:  not  to  use  up  his  remaining  day  of  oppor- 
tunity in  high  carousal,  nor  to  bury  the  money  coming 
into  his  hands  in  order  afterwards  to  dig  it  up  again, 
but  to  lay  it  out  in  making  friends  against  the  time  to 
come.  ''Such,"  Jesus  says  to  men,  "is  your  position  in 
this  world.  You  are  still  stewards;  the  day  of  oppor- 
tunity still  is  yours.  Make  to  yourselves  friends.  Be 
assured  of  this,  that  the  most  profitable  of  all  invest- 
ments of  your  money  is  to  make  friends  by  means  of 
it,  to  make  it  earn  the  love  and  gratitude  of  your 
fellowmen." 

In  this  advice  there  is  nothing  strange ;  this  is  every- 
where inculcated  in  the  Bible,  Old  Testament  as  well 
as  New.  But  the  reason  given  for  it,  the  method  by 
which  Our  Lord  here  indicates  that  material  riches  may 
be  transferred  to  the  eternal  world  and  transmuted  into 
"treasure  in  heaven,"  is  unique.  "That  when  it  fails," 
just  as  the  beneficiaries  of  the  unjust  steward  received 
him  into  their  houses,  so  "they,"  the  friends  you  have 
made,  may  receive  you  into  "eternal  habitations." 
"That  when  it  fails."  It  will  fail.  The  time  will  come 
when  your  material  possessions  will  avail  you  no  more 
than  a  sackful  of  gold  does  a  drowning  man,  and 
gossips  will  ask  not  how  much  you  possess,  but  how 
much  did  you  leave?  What  then?  Have  earthly  pos- 
sessions no  significance  for  the  real  purposes  of  a  man's 


46  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

life?  or  are  they  but  clogs  and  encumbrances  that  make 
the  strait  gate  straiter  still?  Not  so,  Christ  says. 
They  may  be  spiritualised,  immortalised.  There  are 
immortal  objects  on  which  you  may  spend  your  transi- 
tory riches,  not  houses  or  lands  but  your  fellow-im- 
mortals. You  may  use  them  so  that  when  you  go  into 
that  other  world  you  shall  not  enter  it  as  strangers 
and  friendless,  but  shall  find  those  whom  you  have 
made  to  share  in  your  good  things  here  waiting  to 
receive  you  with  welcoming  arms  and  friendly  coun- 
tenances into  the  everlasting  habitations. 

This  is  a  beautiful  thought  with  regard  to  the  world 
to  come,  and  doubtless  a  beautiful  fact  too.  The  con- 
ception of  the  good  results  in  the  eternal  world  which 
naturally  follow  good  stewardship  here  is  put  in  para- 
bolic language,  to  which,  however,  a  literal  interpreta- 
tion need  not  be  denied.  There,  in  that  other  world, 
as  one  by  one  we  are  gathered  into  it,  we  shall  meet 
with  those  to  whom  we  have  shown  Christ's  love  on 
earth.  The  parents  whose  declining  years  you  have 
sheltered  and  comforted,  at  the  expense  perhaps  of 
some  of  youth's  opportunities  and  enjoyments;  the 
dear  ones  for  whom  you  have  toiled  and  watched  and 
suffered ;  the  hungry  or  the  sick  whose  pain  your  charity 
has  eased;  the  struggling  brother  to  whom  you  have 
held  out  a  helping  hand;  the  heathen  man  or  woman 
at  the  other  side  of  the  world  to  whom  you  have  sent 
the  messenger  of  Christ;  the  famished  Belgian  or 
Servian  to  whom  among  the  smoking  ruins  of  their 
land  you  have  sent  relief;  all  whom  you  have  loved 
and  blessed  in  the  Spirit  of  Christ — in  these  you  have 
laid  up  ''treasure  in  heaven,"   with  these  you  have 


THE  LAW  OF  STEWARDSHIP  47 

formed  immortal  ties  which  will  enrich  and  ennoble 
your  life  hereafter.  In  the  everlasting  habitations 
there  may  be  those  who  are  uttering  your  names  with 
benediction,  who  are  praying  for  you  and  waiting  for 
you,  leaning  over  the  ramparts  of  the  City  of  God  as 
they  beckon  to  you,  crying  for  you  to  come  that  they 
and  you  may  be  made  perfect  together. 

And  then,  if  this  parable  shows  how  men  may  be 
eternally  the  better  and  happier  for  the  use  they  make 
of  this  world's  goods,  the  other  which  immediately 
follows,  that  of  the  rich  man  and  Lazarus,  shows  how 
they  may  be  eternally  the  worse.  The  connection  be- 
tween the  two  parables  is  unmistakable.  The  condem- 
nation of  the  rich  man  is  simply  bad  stewardship.  He 
has  not  invested  his  money  well.  He  has  invested  it 
in  purple  and  fine  linen  and  sumptuous  banquets,  in- 
stead of  in  Lazarus.  Nothing  else  is  laid  to  his  charge 
than  this,  that  while  he  was  living  in  mirth  and  splen- 
dour every  day  Lazarus  was  lying  in  unrelieved  misery 
at  his  gate.  Therefore,  according  to  that  awful  parable, 
he  finds  himself  in  hell,  Lazarus  being  the  witness  of 
his  abused  stewardship.  Everywhere  in  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  we  find  this  inevitable  law  of  retribution. 
The  golden  rule  becomes  more  than  golden ;  it  reaches 
up  to  God  and  on  into  eternity :  Do  ye  unto  men  as  ye 
would  that  God  should  do  unto  you. 

This  parable  is  primarily  concerned  with  the  use  of 
money,  and  addresses  more  immediately  those  who 
are  well  furnished  with  this  world's  goods.  It  need 
scarcely  be  said,  however,  that  its  principle  applies  to 
every  capacity  for  service  with  which  God  has  in- 
trusted us.     "As  every  man  hath  received  the  gift, 


48  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

even  so  minister  the  same  one  to  another,  as  good 
stewards  of  the  manifold  grace  of  God."  The  wise 
must  help  the  ignorant;  we  must  put  our  knowledge 
and  intellectual  gifts  out  in  the  service  of  others.  The 
strong  man  must  help  the  weak,  must  bear  gently  with 
misunderstanding  and  prejudice,  must  try  to  put  him- 
self in  the  place  of  the  irresolute  and  faint-hearted, 
and  help  him  over  one  stile  after  another,  and  never 
grow  weary  of  helping.  In  such  stewardship  lies  the 
divine  meaning  of  these  inequalities  which  will  always 
exist  in  human  life.  God  has  made  the  mountain  for 
the  plain  and  the  plain  for  the  mountain;  the  moun- 
tain to  catch  the  rain  and  snow  from  heaven  and  send 
its  streams  down  into  the  valley;  the  plain,  thus  ferti- 
lised, to  bring  forth  "grass  for  the  cattle,  and  herb  for 
the  service  of  man,  and  wine  that  maketh  glad  the 
heart  of  man,  and  oil  to  make  his  face  to  shine,  and 
bread  which  strengtheneth  man's  heart."  Were 
Christ's  great  truth  of  stewardship  adequately  under- 
stood and  practised,  it  would  produce  the  greatest 
revolution  the  world  has  ever  seen,  the  only  revo- 
lution that  can  save  society.  If  only  all  men,  or  even 
a  majority,  conceived  themselves  not  as  owners  but  as 
stewards  of  the  gifts  of  nature,  of  fortune  and  of 
grace,  think  how  this  would  solve  all  our  problems! 
In  the  Church,  so  full  as  it  is  of  wealth,  ability,  and 
culture,  what  financial  demands  would  not  be  easily 
met,  what  difficulty  in  obtaining  competent  persons  to 
carry  on  the  Church's  work  among  the  young,  the 
churchless,  in  the  field  of  home  and  foreign  missions, 
would  not  be  triumphantly  overcome?  Such  difficul- 
ties would  not  exist.     In  the   State,   instead  of  the 


THE  LAW  OF  STEWARDSHIP  49 

office-seeker  or  the  man  who  has  an  axe  of  his  own  to 
grind,  we  should  find,  far  oftener  than  we  do,  the 
most  high-minded  and  competent  citizens  ready  to 
shoulder  the  burden  of  public  affairs;  those  who  in 
other  directions  have  proved  their  power,  showing  their 
will,  even  at  large  personal  sacrifice,  to  serve  the  com- 
munity. In  the  world  of  industry  and  business,  we 
should  find  the  man  of  commercial  genius  and  adminis- 
trative ability  regarding  himself  as  an  organiser  not  as 
an  exploiter  of  other  men's  labour,  as  a  true  captain  of 
industry,  to  whom  self -enrichment,  if  it  come,  will 
come  as  a  by-product,  not  as  the  deliberate  and  domi- 
nating aim  of  his  career.  Christian  men,  men  of  con- 
science, whether  Christian  or  not,  would  regard  the 
unearned  profit  with  suspicion;  they  would  fight  shy 
of  it,  instead  of  scenting  it  from  afar  and  pouncing 
upon  it  with  hurried  flight,  like  the  vulture  upon  the 
carrion.  We  should  hear  no  more  of  men  who  having 
made  an  apparently  honest  contract,  as  the  first  step  to 
its  fulfilment,  walk  to  the  nearest  hotel  and  divide 
amongst  themselves  a  million-dollar  "rake-off,"  then 
tell  the  tale  with  imperturbable  effrontery  because 
they  tell  it,  as  they  know,  to  millions  who  will  hear  it 
with  only  a  sigh  of  envy. 

This  grand  doctrine  of  Jesus  Christ,  this  interpre- 
tation of  life  as  stewardship,  opens  up  the  largest 
regions  of  thought  and  motive.  It  contains  all  the 
truth  there  is  in  Socialism  and  none  of  its  falsehoods. 
And  it  has  heights  and  depths  of  which  Socialism 
does  not  dream.  It  has  such  depths.  It  demands  of  us 
surrenders,  sacrifices,  the  enforcement  of  which  by 
political  power  or  socialistic  programme  we  should 


50  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

justly  resent.  An  old  French  admiral,  famous  for 
his  loyalty,  took  as  his  device  a  flaming  oar  with  the 
singular  device:  "For  another?  No!"  He  meant  that 
he  was  ready  to  do  or  dare  or  suffer  for  his  King 
what  he  would  not  for  any  other.  Even  so,  for  Christ, 
as  members  of  the  absolute  Divine  Kingdom,  in  obedi- 
ence to  that  highest  imperative  which  ^'demands  my 
life,  my  soul,  my  all"  we  shall  be  ready  to  do  what  no 
lower  authority  has  the  right  to  bid  us  do,  give  what 
no  human  power  has  the  right  to  demand,  forgive  what 
no  man  has  the  right  to  inflict.  For  another?  No! 
For  Christ?  Yes!  And  this  truth  of  stewardship 
rises  to  unearthly  heights.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
inspiring  conceptions  in  the  whole  compass  of  Chris- 
tian truth.  It  links  earth  to  heaven,  the  little  now  to 
the  great  hereafter;  shows  us  how  the  few  and  transient 
things  of  the  present  may  be  made  the  seed  from  which 
shall  spring  an  immortal  harvest.  My  brethren,  we 
may  be  Christians  and  yet,  be  assured,  we  may  enrich 
or  impoverish  our  heaven.  By  careless  or  faithless 
stewardship,  by  selfishness  or  slothfulness,  we  may 
stunt  our  soul's  growth  and  narrow  our  capacity  for 
entering  into  the  joy  of  our  Lord.  But  if  we  are 
using  the  much  or  little  committed  to  us  as  faithful 
stewards,  investing  it  in  the  service  of  God  by  the 
service  of  our  fellowmen,  turning  it  into  moral  equiva- 
lents, the  currency  of  Heaven — then  when  the  world's 
wealth  and  fashion  are  all  dead  and  done  with,  this 
will  be  a  crown  that  fadeth  not  away,  a  garment  that 
moth  cannot  consume,  a  treasure  rust  cannot  corrupt, 
a  work  imperishable  and  undecaying  because  it  is 
wrought  in  God.    Make  to  yourselves  friends.    Invest 


THE  LAW  OF  STEWARDSHIP  51 

in  Christlike  welldoing  while  your  brief  day  of  oppor- 
tunity lasts ;  for  this  is  the  perfect^  love  which  casteth 
out  fear. 


^That  this   is  the  meaning  in   i   John  4:    17,   18,  I  have  en- 
deavoured to  show  in  my  Tests  of  Life,  pp.  285ff. 


IV 

Politics  According  to  Christ 

And  when  the  ten  heard  it  they  were  moved  with  indig- 
nation concerning  the  two  brethren.  But  Jesus  called  them 
unto  him  and  said,  Ye  know  that  the  rulers  of  the  Gentiles  lord 
it  over  them,  and  their  great  ones  exercise  authority  over 
them.  Not  so  shall  it  be  among  you;  but  whosoever  would 
become  great  among  you  shall  be  your  minister;  and  who- 
soever would  be  first  among  you  shall  be  your  servant;  even 
as  the  Son  of  Man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to 
minister,  and  to  give  his  life  a  ransom  for  many. — Matt.  20: 
24-28.     (R.V.) 

Christianity  is  not  in  itself  a  political  system,  neither 
is  it  wedded  to  any.  It  can  flourish,  and  has  flourished, 
under  every  form  of  social  and  political  organization. 
Nevertheless  Christianity  is  a  political  force,  a  force 
which  must  necessarily  influence  and  in  the  end  deter- 
mine the  organization  of  community  life.  It  is  the 
greatest  of  political  forces  because  it  is  the  greatest  of 
spiritual  forces,  and  because  it  is  by  spiritual  forces 
and  laws  that  the  human  world  is  ultimately  governed. 
And  in  this  passage  our  Lord  lays  down  the  eternal 
principle  of  sound  politics,  first  and  directly  with  regard 
to  the  ideal  kingdom,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  and 
then  indirectly  concerning  the  kingdoms  of  this  world. 
Let  us  see  when  and  why  He  was  led  to  do  this. 

It  was  within  a  week  of  the  Crucifixion,  and  He  had 
been  once  more  announcing  to  His  disciples  the  over- 

52 


POLITICS  ACCORDING  TO  CHRIST      53 

whelming  tragedy  in  which  His  earthly  career  was 
destined  to  end,  and  which  now  lay  immediately  before 
Him.  And  then  the  next  thing  we  read  is  that  two  of 
their  number,  James  and  John,  are  trying  to  steal  a 
march  upon  the  others  in  the  struggle  for  honour  and 
precedence  in  the  kingdom  of  their  dreams,  seeking  to 
coax  their  Master  into  a  blindfold  promise  that  they 
might  sit  the  one  on  His  right  hand  and  the  other  on 
His  left  in  the  places  next  the  Throne.  It  was  either 
a  very  heartless  or  a  very  noble  thing  these  young 
men  did.  It  looks  like  a  piece  of  heartless  selfishness 
that  at  the  very  moment  when  their  Master's  soul  was 
so  full  of  the  thought  of  self-sacrifice,  they  were 
occupied  only  with  their  own  interests  and  ambitions. 
But  I  prefer  to  think  that  what  they  did  had  a  noble 
side  to  it.  There  is  an  old  story  in  Roman  history, 
that  once  when  Rome  was  closely  besieged  by  the 
Gauls  and  there  seemed  to  be  little  hope  of  the  city's 
making  a  successful  resistance,  the  Romans  to  show 
their  invincible  confidence  put  up  to  auction  the  ground 
on  which  the  enemy  were  then  encamped.  And  I 
would  wish  to  think  that  in  a  like  spirit  of  heroic 
faith  these  disciples  saw  the  clear  sky  beyond  the 
darkness  of  the  approaching  storm — ^that  their  petition 
for  thrones  just  when  the  Master  was  pointing  to  the 
Cross  was,  as  it  were,  a  vote  of  confidence,  that  it 
amounted  to  saying:  "Lord,  thou  tellest  us  of  all  the 
dreadful  things  that  are  to  befall  thee;  but  our  faith 
remains  unshaken.  Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  King 
of  Israel,  and  for  our  part  we  covet  nothing  so  much 
as  thy  promise,  that  when  thou  comest  into  thy  king- 
dom ours  shall  be  the  highest  places  in  thy  gift."    But 


54  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

whether  the  request  was  more  selfish  or  more  noble, 
it  was  at  any  rate  entirely  foolish  and  unwarrantable, 
one  which  it  was  impossible  for  our  Lord  to  consider. 
And  this  He  now  proceeded  to  show  them. 

The  first  thing  to  be  observed  is  that  He  does  not 
reject  the  idea  of  differences  of  rank  and  degrees  of 
greatness  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  He  articulately 
affirms  that  in  the  ideal  kingdom  no  less  than 
in  earthly  societies,  there  are  places  of  dignity  and 
power  and  others  of  subordination.  There  is  no  dead 
level  of  equality,  either  on  earth  or  in  heaven,  in  nature 
or  in  grace.  Equal  rights  and  opportunities  justice 
assigns  to  all;  and  to  secure  this  in  ever-growing 
measure  is  to-day  the  aim  of  all  enlightened  statesman- 
ship. We  want  to  give  all  men  a  better  chance,  and 
so  far  as  possible  an  equal  chance,  to  make  the  most 
and  best  of  themselves.  But  that  does  not  constitute 
an  equality  of  the  "selves";  rather  does  it  tend  to 
bring  out  more  clearly  the  natural  inequalities  of  men. 
It  is  inevitable,  and  it  is  the  divine  purpose,  that  there 
shall  always  be  those  who,  in  one  way  or  another, 
shall  exercise  power  over  their  fellows;  some  fitted 
to  be  leaders  and  others  to  be  led ;  some  to  be  teachers 
and  others  to  be  taught;  some  with  gifts  of  organiza- 
tion and  administration  fitted  to  rule  and  others  to 
be  ruled.  In  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  we  know, 
such  power  over  others  is  wholly  spiritual,  belonging 
to  the  essential  nature  of  things,  leaning  upon  no  acci- 
dental concurrence  of  circumstances.  There  men  are 
governed  by  their  reason,  their  conscience,  their  affec- 
tions. The  ideal  kingdom  is  a  kingdom  of  influence, 
not  of  violence.    And  in  this  respect  the  kingdoms  of 


POLITICS  ACCORDING  TO  CHRIST      55 

this  world  shall  become,  yes,  despite  all  we  see  in  this 
distracted  world,  are  slowly  becoming  and  shall  yet 
far  more  become  like  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  of 
His  Christ.  Men  shall  govern  and  be  governed  by 
spiritual  authority;  by  reason,  not  by  compulsion,  by 
right,  not  by  might,  by  love,  not  by  fear.  Still,  our 
Lord  assumes  as  a  first  principle  that  there  will  be 
government,  that  there  will  be  in  the  Heavenly  King- 
dom, as  in  every  kingdom,  those  who  are  qualified  to 
exercise  a  more  dominating  influence  than  others,  and 
that  the  means  of  doing  so — wealth,  offices  of  dignity 
and  power — shall  be  in  the  hands  of  those  who  are 
best  fitted  to  use  them. 

But  who  are  these?  That  is  the  question  Jesus 
next  answers.  These  two  young  men  had  come  to 
Him  with  their  stupendous  request,  and,  as  is  evident, 
they  had  never  spent  one  serious  minute  in  asking 
themselves  what  qualifications  they  might  possess  for 
the  lofty  positions  to  which  they  aspired.  Merely  as  a 
matter  of  personal  favour  and  arbitrary  patronage, 
they  seemed  to  think,  their  Master  might,  without 
cost  to  Himself,  bestow  these  ample  and  dazzling  re- 
wards upon  faithful  friends  and  followers  like  them- 
selves. But  with  all  possible  emphasis  Jesus  repudi- 
ates such  a  notion.  In  earthly  kingdoms  it  may  be 
so.  Disorder  and  disaster  are  constantly  brought  about 
by  the  elevation  to  place  and  power  of  incompetent 
or  unscrupulous  men,  who  creep  by  courtly  art  or 
family  influence  into  positions  of  emolument  and 
power.  But  it  cannot  be  so  in  the  Divine  Kingdom. 
In  it  dignity  and  power  are  given  as  the  result,  not 
of  a  Divine  partiality,  but  of  a  Divine  preparation; 


56  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

and,  as  our  Lord  plainly  intimates,  He  could  not  exalt 
to  the  heavenly  thrones  any  whose  gifts  were  unfitted 
or  whose  character  was  unprepared  for  them. 

The  disciples'  request,  you  see,  was  based  on  a  false 
theory  of  life,  the  official  theory,  that  it  is  the  place 
that  makes  the  man,  and  not  the  man  that  makes 
the  place,  great  or  small,  as  the  case  may  be.  That 
false  theory,  how  it  still  blinds  men!  How  men  still 
regard  the  setting  and  trappings  of  life  as  more  than 
life,  position  as  more  than  manhood!  And  it  is  so 
transparently  false,  so  silly.  Who  does  not  see  that 
to  be  a  king,  a  dignitary,  a  millionaire,  does  not  add 
an  inch  to  a  man's  real  stature,  but  may  only  serve 
as  a  luminous  background  against  which  his  intrinsic 
littleness  stands  out  with  crueller  clarity?  It  is  not 
the  great  platform  that  makes  the  orator  great;  the 
great  orator  gives  any  platform  distinction.  It  is  not 
the  title  that  honours  desert,  but  desert  that  honours 
the  title;  not  the  task  that  gives  rank  to  the  worker, 
but  the  worker  who  gives  rank  to  the  task.  The  supreme 
example  of  this  is  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  himself.  We 
speak  of  His  redemptive  offices.  He  is  the  Messiah, 
the  Christ  of  God;  He  is  Prophet,  Priest,  and  King. 
One  has  even  heard  of  His  doing  this  or  that  in  **an 
official  capacity,"  men  thrusting  their  false  theory  of 
life  even  into  the  Holy  of  Holies.  The  one  thing  of 
which  there  is  not  vestige  or  possibility  in  Jesus 
Christ  is  officialism.  All  is  real.  It  is  not  His  offices 
that  make  the  Jesus  our  souls  adore ;  it  is  Jesus,  Jesus 
only,  that  makes  the  offices  the  divine  realities  they 
are.  He  fills  them  with  Himself.  And  in  His  Kingdom, 
the  kingdom  of  spirit  and  truth,  there  are  no  merely 


POLITICS  ACCORDING  TO  CHRIST      57 

official  dignities.  The  nearest  to  Christ  in  glory  and 
power  can  only  be  those  who  are  nearest  to  Him  in 
character  and  experience,  who  have  drunk  most  deeply 
of  His  cup  and  been  baptised  with  His  baptism.  The 
result  will  doubtless  be  very  surprising.  Many  that 
are  first  shall  be  last,  and  the  last  first. 

And  then  our  Lord  answers  the  question,  what  it 
is  that  qualifies  men  for  positions  of  power  and  in- 
fluence in  the  heavenly  Kingdom,  by  laying  down  the 
fundamental  political  principle  that  service  is  the  path 
to  power.  He  emphasises  this  law  of  the  ideal  com- 
monwealth by  contrasting  it  with  the  opposite  prin- 
ciple which  so  generally  prevails  in  worldly  communi- 
ties. **The  princes  of  the  Gentiles  lord  it  over  them, 
and  they  that  are  great  exercise  authority  over  them." 
All  earthly  kingdoms,  says  Newman,  are  originally 
founded  on  force  or  fraud.  I  suppose  that  is  true. 
The  original  source  of  earthly  dominion  will  almost 
always  be  found  to  have  been  the  strong  hand.  One 
man  wielded  a  sharper  sword  or  a  heavier  club  than 
his  rivals.  One  tribe  conquered  neighbouring  tribes  in 
war.  Tribute  is  exacted;  lands  are  annexed;  a  ruling 
family  is  founded,  or  a  lordly  caste  in  whose  hands 
wealth  and  power  and  prestige  accumulate  almost 
automatically,  as  the  smaller  streams  become  tributaries 
of  the  greater.  Thus  men  come  to  be  divided  into  two 
classes,  one  whose  birthright  it  is  to  rule,  another 
whose  birthright  is  to  be  ruled;  a  class  whose  pre- 
rogative it  is  to  be  ministered  unto,  another  whose 
province  is  to  minister.  And  the  point  is  that  in  the 
kingdoms  of  the  world  those  who  are  thus  ministered 
unto,  who  live  by  the  exertions  and  sacrifices  of  others, 


58  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

are  accounted  as  the  great  and  high ;  they  are  the  lords 
of  creation,  while  those  who  minister  unto  them  are 
regarded  as  politically  and  socially  their  inferiors. 
But  in  the  final  and  perfect  Kingdom,  Christ  tells  us, 
this  relation  will  be  precisely  reversed.  In  it  also  there 
are  those  who  render  service  and  those  who  receive  it ; 
but  it  is  those  who  serve  most  who  also  rule,  who  by 
universal  consent  hold  the  places  of  dignity  and  power. 
And  then  it  follows  that  as  service  is  the  path  to 
power,  so  again  power  is  used  as  opportunity  for  larger 
service.  "The  princes  of  the  Gentiles  lord  it  over  them, 
and  their  great  ones  exercise  authority  upon  them." 
The  words  denote  a  harsh,  despotic,  disdainful  attitude 
of  mind,  such  as  is  always  apt  to  be  engendered  in  those 
who  are  born  or  adopted  into  the  traditions  of  a  ruling 
class  and  so  fall  naturally  into  the  error  of  supposing 
that  the  millions  exist  for  the  sake  of  the  ruler,  not 
the  ruler  for  the  sake  of  the  ruled.  But  this  too  must 
be  reversed.  "Whosoever  of  you  will  be  greatest, 
shall  be  servant  of  all."  There  is  a  way,  Christ  says, 
by  which  you  can  compel  your  fellowmen  to  become 
contributory  to  your  advancement  and  harness  them- 
selves to  the  chariot-wheels  of  your  power  and  great- 
ness; but  it  is  not  the  world's  way  of  struggling  up- 
ward to  outreach  and  overtop  others;  it  is  my  way 
of  stooping  in  lowliness  to  help  and  serve.  That  is  the 
true  meaning  of  greatness;  that  is  power.  When  a 
man  rises  in  the  world,  becomes  richer,  more  famous 
and  influential,  to  the  worldly  mind  that  means  that 
there  are  a  larger  number  of  people  whom  he  can 
bully  or  pay  or  somehow  induce  to  do  his  work  for 
him,   or  to  become  subservient  to  his  purposes,  to 


POLITICS  ACCORDING  TO  CHRIST      59 

applaud  his  performances,  to  bow  down  before  him, 
and  in  general  make  him  seem  great  and  glorious.  But 
to  the  Christian  mind,  to  rise  in  the  scale  of  power 
is  only  to  increase  the  number  of  persons  whom  you 
can  serve,  or  the  number  of  ways  in  which  you  can 
serve  them.  The  poet  can  serve  a  larger  number  of 
persons,  and  in  a  higher  way,  than  the  artisan;  and 
the  statesman  than  the  cobbler.  You  take  what  your 
fellowmen  give  you — ^wealth,  influence,  leisure  from 
the  more  sordid  tasks  of  life — but  you  give  it  all  back, 
with  yourself  added  to  it,  in  service.  That  is  Christ's 
conception  of  how  power  is  to  be  acquired,  and  what 
it  means  when  it  is  acquired:  "For  even  the  Son  of 
Man,"  the  Messiah  in  the  most  transcendent  conception 
of  Messiahship,  "came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but 
to  minister  and  to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for  many." 

Now  in  all  this  there  is  no  direct  teaching  regarding 
the  right  political  constitution  of  society.  What  Christ 
is  inculcating  is  a  spirit  which  may  animate  the  most 
absolute  of  autocrats  as  well  as  the  most  unbending 
champion  of  democracy.  Yet  He  is  dealing  here  with 
politics  in  the  deepest  way.  He  is  declaring  the  basis 
upon  which  the  power  of  man  over  man  ought  to  rest 
and  ultimately  does  rest.  It  is  the  will  of  Christ,  it 
is  the  policy  of  His  government,  that  men  who  have 
proved  their  ability  and  will  to  achieve  not  their  own 
affluence  or  aggrandisement  but  true  social  service, 
should  have  more  power  in  their  hands,  more  honour 
and  influence,  than  those  who  have  given  no  such  proof. 
And  although  it  is  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  Christ  is 
here  speaking  of,  it  is  certain  that  the  more  closely  the 
kingdoms  of  this  world  approximate  to  the  ideal  King- 


6o  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

dom  in  their  practice,  the  more  they  will  prosper,  and 
that  the  future  of  the  world  lies  with  those  nations 
which  succeed  in  securing  the  largest  measure  of  polit- 
ical power  and  social  influence  for  those  who  show  the 
largest  capacity  and  the  most  earnest  will  to  serve 
their  fellowmen. 

Let  us  look  a  minute  or  two  longer  at  this  great 
political  truth  which  Christ  reveals  at  the  heart  of  His 
Gospel,  that  service  is  the  path  to  power  and  power  the 
path  to  larger  service.  This  is  no  arbitrary  law  super- 
imposed for  moral  ends  upon  the  nature  of  things. 
It  is  ultimate,  insuppressible  truth.  There  are  two 
great  reasons  why  it  must  be  so.  The  first  lies  in 
man's  own  nature.  Service  is  necessarily  the  path  to 
power  because  it  is  the  one  way  to  the  making  of  a 
powerful  man.  Power  is  not  an  external  thing  which 
you  can  put  on  and  wear  like  a  uniform.  Power  is  a 
vital  thing,  within  a  man;  a  quality  of  the  mind,  the 
heart,  the  will;  an  ability  to  see  and  think  and  feel, 
to  do  and  suffer.  And  there  is  no  possible  way  of 
gaining  power  but  by  bearing  the  yoke  of  service. 
Only  as  the  talent  is  faithfully  use:d  does  the  vital 
capital  increase.  Only  by  service  does  the  will  acquire 
that  steady  firmness  by  which  others  are  swayed.  It 
is  by  service  that  a  man  becomes  a  really  bigger,  more 
potent  personality,  that  his  nature  is  enlarged  and 
strengthened,  that  character  is  braced  and  disciplined. 
It  is  service  that  issues  in  true  nobility  and  power. 

The  second  reason  is  that  men  are  most  potently 
governed  by  their  higher  affections,  by  reverence, 
admiration,  and  love,  and  therefore  by  those  who  serve 
them.     The  whole  faith  of  Christianity  hinges  upon 


POLITICS  ACCORDING  TO  CHRIST      6i 

this,  that  love  is  the  mightiest  power  in  the  universe, 
that  God  is  love,  and  that  all  moral  beings  are  in  the 
end  influenced  and  governed  by  love  rather  than  by 
fear.  God,  the  God  revealed  in  Christ,  ventures  all 
upon  the  power  of  love.  He  stakes  His  Divine  King- 
dom, His  redemptive  government  of  the  universe  upon 
the  supremacy  of  love.  It  is  by  the  Blood  of  the  Cross, 
as  St.  Paul  saw,  that  He  will  reconcile  all  things  unto 
Himself,  whether  they  be  things  on  earth  or  things  in 
heaven.  If  He  use  force,  as  He  does,  it  is  as  auxiliary 
to  love;  it  is  force  demanded  and  applied  by  love. 
Love  is  not  limited,  as  some  would  have  us  believe,  to 
the  one  method  of  gentleness  and  meek  submission. 
The  pierced  Hand  may  wield  the  chastening  rod,  yea, 
the  rod  of  iron  upon  the  rebellious,  piercing  itself 
anew  with  every  blow  it  inflicts ;  yet,  if  He  wrestle  with 
us  like  the  angel  at  Peniel,  until  He  break  us  down  and 
seem  to  be  the  worst  enemy  we  have,  it  is  only  that 
like  Jacob  we  may  discover  in  our  antagonist  Him 
whose  nature  and  whose  name  is  Love.  Love  is  God's 
most  royal,  conquering  power.  By  infinite  patience, 
sympathy,  and  forgiveness  shall  wrong  be  overcome. 
And  with  His  sure  intuition  of  eternal  truth  Jesus 
sees,  and  here  proclaims,  that  the  only  true  royalty  is 
that  of  loving  service,  the  highest  royalty  that  of 
the  supreme  sacrifice.  The  Son  of  Man,  the  King 
of  Glory,  whose  dominion  is  founded  in  the  everlast- 
ing nature  of  things,  is  He  who  comes  not  to  be  minis- 
tered unto  but  to  minister,  and  to  give  His  life  a  ransom 
for  many.  This  is  the  political  principle  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven.  There  is  a  throne  in  your  heart  and 
mine,  and  on  that  throne  is  Jesus  Christ.    And  why? 


62  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

Because  that  throne  is  the  throne  of  love,  and  because 
He  has  won  that  throne,  because  He  has  served  us 
above  all  other  serving,  in  that  awful  uttermost  min- 
istry whereby  He  has  met  us  in  our  greatest  need.  It 
is  upon  this  He  is  building  His  immortal  empire ;  it  is 
for  this  we  bow  before  Him  in  unutterable  adoration. 

Here  then  is  the  basal  political  principle,  upon 
which  men  and  nations  must  act  if  they  would 
acquire  the  enduring  reality  and  not  the  empty 
phantom  of  power:  men  are  governed  by  love;  the 
path  to  power  is  service;  the  true  rulers  of  the  world 
must  ever  be  those  men  and  those  peoples  that  show 
most  of  the  will  and  the  capacity  to  serve. 

That  is  the  Christian  ideal,  and,  while  all  the  nations 
have  come  short  of  it,  it  is  because  one  of  them  has 
adopted  the  opposite  ideal  that  the  world  is  plunged  into 
this  devastating  strife.  Germany  stands  deliberately  to- 
day as  the  incarnation  of  government  by  fear.  Her 
aim  has  been  to  make  herself  formidable,  to  inspire 
terror  and,  in  the  words  of  her  prophet,  Nietzsche, 
to  "live  dangerously."  What  we  are  fighting  is  really 
a  creed  in  arms,  a  philosophy,  a  theory  of  life  that  has 
poisoned  the  wells  of  German  civilisation.  Germany 
has  been  in  the  past  one  of  the  great  servant-nations. 
The  people  that  gave  us  Bach  and  Beethoven,  Goethe, 
Kant,  Schleiermacher,  and  all  the  host  of  scholars 
and  scientists  whose  marvellously  patient  and  un- 
selfish labours  have  so  enriched  the  world,  the  Ger- 
many that  produced  such  men  and  regarded  them  as 
its  national  heroes,  we  can  never  cease  to  reverence. 
But  modern  Germany  has  gone  after  false  gods.  A 
philosophy  of  life  that  is  aggressively  anti-Christian 


POLITICS  ACCORDING  TO  CHRIST      63 

has  been  ardently  embraced,  in  all  its  practical  conse- 
quences at  least,  by  the  Prussian  war-lords  and  has 
filtered  down  into  the  minds  of  the  multitude.  The 
divine  doctrine  of  love,  the  Christian  ideals  of  pity, 
service,  and  self-sacrifice,  it  proclaims  to  be  the  greatest 
of  delusions,  and  the  most  fatal  of  hindrances  to  human 
progress,  a  slave-religion  devised  by  the  weak  and 
helpless  for  their  own  protection.  Men  are  to  deny  the 
will  to  serve  and  to  assert  the  will  to  power.  Pity  is 
not  humanity,  but  a  crime  against  humanity.  The 
great  man  is  not  he  who  is  in  sympathy  with  his  fel- 
lows, but  the  ruthless  man  who  can  inflict  the  greatest 
suffering  without  heeding  the  cries  of  his  victim.  Men 
are  governed  by  fear — that  is  the  creed  of  German 
militarism,  and  one  result  already  secured  by  the  war 
is  the  damnation  of  this  creed  by  facts.  ^Why  is  it 
that  in  all  the  civilised  world  Germany  has  not  an  ally 
except  the  Turk,  that  not  one  nation  has  lifted  up  a 
voice  on  her  behalf?  It  is  because  Germany  has  chosen 
to  live  dangerously.  Why  is  it  that  all  her  calculations 
have  gone  awry?  Why  is  it  that  Belgium  refused 
her  passage?  that  the  revolt  in  India  and  Egypt  and 
South  Africa  she  counted  upon  practically  failed  to 
happen  ?  that  on  the  contrary  the  Boers  and  the  people 
of  India  have  so  splendidly  rallied  to  the  aid  of  the 
Motherland?  Because  they  knew  how  the  military 
potentates  of  Germany  lord  it  over  Germans  them- 
selves, and  what  the  German  doctrine  of  ruthlessness 
means  for  the  weaker  nations.     Why  is  it  that  the 


*This  sermon  was  preached  in  the  early  days  of  the  war,  before 
Bulgaria  had  joined  the  Turco-Teutonic  alliance. 


64  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

Allies  are  so  utterly  resolved  to  fight  this  war  to  their 
last  breath?  It  is  because  Germany  has  made  herself 
to  be  so  much  feared  by  all  peace-loving,  freedom- 
loving  men,  because  her  victory  would  rivet  upon 
Europe  the  chains  of  a  military  despotism  the  most 
crushing  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Germany  has 
trusted  in  the  power  of  fear;  and  already  she  knows, 
when  she  sees  the  whole  world  in  moral  alliance  against 
her,  and  contrasts  with  her  own  friendless  condition 
the  marvellous  unity  of  our  Empire,  an  empire  held 
together  by  little  else'  than  the  silken  cords  of  love — 
she  knows,  or  at  least  must  learn,  that  Christ's  is  the 
eternal  truth  and  that  antichrist  is  doomed. 

But  while  it  is  true  that  Germany  has  chosen  to 
stand  for  the  falsehood  of  the  magisterial  principle, 
that  power  belongs  to  the  ''mailed  fist"  and  to  the  nation 
that  "lives  dangerously,"  can  we  with  truth  say  that 
our  own  Empire  stands  for  the  truth  of  the  ministerial 
principle,  that  the  source  of  power  is  service?  There 
is  nothing  in  our  record  of  which  we  can  speak  boast- 
fully; there  is  many  a  blot  upon  it;  yet  in  this  thing, 
we  may  humbly  say,  lies  Britain's  truest  title  to  great- 
ness. She  has  served  humanity  as  no  other  people 
has  been  privileged  to  do.  Far  indeed  from  having 
attained  to  the  Christian  ideal  of  empire,  either  at 
home  or  abroad,  yet  more  and  more  consciously  and 
resolutely  Britain  has  set  her  face  toward  that  ideal. 
To  whichever  of  her  dependencies  you  look — India, 
Egypt,  the  Sudan,  Uganda,  Nigeria — you  find  her  com- 
ing, not  to  steal  and  to  kill  and  destroy,  but  to  bring 
life  more  abundantly;  not  to  enslave  but  to  liberate; 
to  bring  out  of  confusion,  order;  instead  of  oppres- 


POLITICS  ACCORDING  TO  CHRIST     65 

sion,  justice;  instead  of  danger  and  fear,  security;  to 
shepherd  her  many  flocks  in  the  path  of  material  and 
moral  progress.  To  this  noble  task  she  has  devoted 
the  flower  of  her  manhood.  And  when  I  think  how 
at  home  and  in  her  colonies  the  British  nation,  with 
all  its  slowness  of  movement,  has  been  seeking  to 
follow  the  higher  ideals  of  national  life,  the  ameliora- 
tion of  the  lot  of  the  weak  and  poor,  the  more  equal 
distribution  of  opportunity  to  all,  as  well  as  what  it 
has  done  and  is  doing  abroad  to  impart  the  blessings 
of  civilisation  and  Christianity  to  the  more  backward 
races,  I  cannot  but  claim  that  with  all  its  defects  and 
failures,  our  Empire  is  the  most  widely  beneficent  of 
all  secular  institutions  in  the  world  to-day.  And  I  am 
filled  with  humble  confidence  for  the  future.  Britain's 
sun  cannot  set  till  Britain's  work  is  done ;  and  God  has 
yet  a  great  work  for  us  to  do.  And  if  we  are  obedient 
to  His  call,  if  ours  be  the  will  to  serve,  if  we  baptise 
our  gifts  in  th^  spirit  of  Christ,  He  will  not  remove  us 
from  our  place,  but  will  still  lead  us  in  the  van  of  the 
nations,  and  still  lay  upon  us  "the  white  man's  burden,'* 
the  spiritual  leadership  of  the  world.  Firmly  trusting 
in  Him  whose  work  we  are  here  to  do,  let  us  be  strong 
and  of  a  good  courage  while  we  take  up  the  awful 
burden  of  our  present  cross,  the 

Arduous  strife,  the  eternal  law 

To  which  the  triumph  of  all  good  is  given. 


Why  Hast  Thou  Forsaken  Me? 

And  about  the  ninth  hour  Jesus  cried  with  a  loud  voice, 
saying,  Eli,  Eli,  lama  sabachthani?  that  is  to  say,  My  God,  my 
God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  ? — Matt.  2^ :  46. 

This  is  one  of  those  passages  of  scripture  which  a 
preacher  approaches  with  a  diffidence  amounting  al- 
most to  reluctance.  For  preacher  and  hearers  alike 
one  feels  that  it  requires  that  peculiarly  devotional 
atmosphere  we  breathe  when  we  are  gathered,  as  now, 
around  the  Lord's  Table.  On  the  other  hand,  this 
word  from  the  Cross  is  a  revelation  so  unique  and 
amazing  of  the  inner  experience  of  our  Lord  that  it 
not  only  deserves  but  demands  our  most  reverential 
study,  even  though  the  result  be  to  make  us  feel  that 
here  we  stand  upon  the  verge  of  an  inscrutable  abyss, 
or  can  enter  only  a  little  way  into  the  shallows  near 
the  shore. 

From  the  hour  of  noon,  we  are  told,  and  for  three 
hours  thereafter,  a  great  darkness  came  down  upon 
Calvary  and  the  surrounding  country.  Now,  in  the 
Gospels,  the  history  of  these  three  hours  is  a  com- 
plete silence.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  pall  of  gloom 
which  turned  midday  to  midnight  arrested  all  move- 
ment and  held  men  rooted  to  the  spot  where  they 
stood.  All  the  babel  of  voices  which  had  surged 
around  the  Cross,  all  the  chatter  and  the  laughter, 

66 


WHY  HAST  THOU  FORSAKEN  ME?     (^y 

suddenly  died  on  the  lips  of  the  mockers.  All  was 
still,  soundless  as  the  grave.  And  there,  in  the  heart 
of  that  solitude,  curtained  in  from  all  the  world,  alone, 
Jesus  hung  for  three  hours  of  mortal  agony  upon  the 
Cross.  And  how  grateful,  as  we  might  think,  must 
that  solitude  have  been  to  Him.  Now,  like  a  dying 
man  who  has  bidden  farewell  to  the  world  and  turns 
his  face  to  the  wall  to  await  his  summons,  now  might 
Jesus  forget  friend  and  foe  alike  and  be  alone  with 
God,  to  strengthen  and  comfort  Himself  in  his  Father. 
But  what  is  our  amazement  and  almost  our  dismay 
to  discover  that  with  Him  it  is  midnight  within  as  well 
as  without,  and  that  the  one  voice  which  breaks  that 
unearthly  silence  is  the  cry  of  the  soul  in  conflict  with 
despair:  My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken 
me? 

Now,  this  is  neither  the  time  nor  the  place  for  dis- 
cussion, though  these  words  have  been  the  subject  of 
much  discussion,  both  theological  and  psychological. 
But,  pondering  over  them,  this  is  how  the  matter  ap- 
pears to  me.  In  the  physical  sciences  we  reach  certain 
conceptions  which  are  called  ''absolutes,"  points  beyond 
which  physical  possibilities  cannot  go.  Thus  for  ex- 
ample the  absolute  zero  of  temperature  is  the  point 
(imaginary,  of  course)  beyond  which  there  cannot  be 
an  intenser  cold,  which  is  the  limit  of  natural  possi- 
bility in  that  direction.  And  one  feels  intuitively  that 
in  this  cry  of  desolation  from  the  lips  of  Jesus  Christ 
we  reach  certain  limits  of  what  is  possible  in  spiritual 
experience. 

First  we  reach  the  absolute  of  sneering.  For  great  as 
is    the    capacity    of    the    body    for    suffering,    it    is 


68  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

exceeded  by  that  of  the  mind.  A  flood  of  mental 
anguish  will  sometimes  obliterate  the  consciousness 
even  of  acute  physical  pain.  Under  the  blow  of  great 
disaster  or  bereavement  all  other  sensations  are  swal- 
lowed up  in  the  one  agony  of  soul.  And  of  all  kinds 
of  mental  suffering  the  most  intense  is  that  which 
religion  itself  is  capable  of  producing.  Religion,  which 
can  shed  the  light  of  purest  and  most  rapturous  joy 
upon  the  soul,  can  also  fill  it  with  the  dreariest  and 
gloomiest  distress,  distress  that  for  the  time  is  un- 
relieved and  inconsolable.  If  it  can  make  a  heaven  in 
the  heart,  it  can  also  make  something  like  a  hell,  and 
that  in  the  same  heart.  Any  minister  who  has  had  much 
experience  in  the  cure  of  souls  knows  this  fact.  And 
many  of  the  great  Christian  biographies,  the  lives  of 
the  greatest  saints,  bear  witness  to  it;  for  just  those 
natures  which  are  religiously  the  most  highly  gifted 
are  the  most  susceptible  to  such  distress. 

May  not  we  ourselves  understand  something  of  this, 
even  if  we  are,  thank  God !  strangers  to  the  experience? 
Think  what  it  is  to  a  man,  to  any  man  who  believes  in 
God  and  loves  God,  to  feel  that  God  is  his,  that  what- 
ever befall  him,  God  is  left,  his  sure  defence,  his  un- 
failing hope,  his  exceeding  great  reward.  When  Henry 
Martyn  lay  dying,  fever-stricken  and  alone,  he  wrote : 
"I  thought  of  my  God,  in  solitude  my  company,  my 
Friend  and  my  Comforter."  A  man  may  ride  out 
great  storms  when  he  feels  that  he  has  that  anchor 
to  hold  by.  You  yourselves  know  what  it  is  to  go  to 
your  Heavenly  Father  and  cast  upon  him  your  burdens 
of  sin  and  weakness,  sorrow  and  care.  You  know 
what  it  is  when  depressed  and  in  perplexity  to  say, 


WHY  HAST  THOU  FORSAKEN  ME?      69 

"Why  art  thou  cast  down,  O  my  soul  ?  Hope  thou  in 
God";  or  what  it  is,  when  hopes  are  bHghted,  or  trou- 
bles rain  thick  upon  you,  when  trusted  ones  are  faithless 
or  loved  ones  are  taken  away,  to  find  in  your  certitude 
of  God  the  strength  to  bear  it  all.  You  can  find  heal- 
ing and  comfort  under  the  wings  of  His  unchanging 
love.  What  then  would  it  be  to  feel,  and  just  at  your 
greatest  need,  that  you  had  lost  God;  that  you  were 
left  with  a  dumb  universe,  to  face  time  and  fate,  life 
and  death,  alone;  that  you  were  outside  the  circle  of 
the  Divine  love  and  compassion  and  care  for  ever? 
I  cannot,  I  confess,  realize  what  such  a  sense  of  God- 
forsakenness  would  be  even  in  my  own  case,  much  less 
what  it  would  be  for  those  of  far  stronger  and  finer 
religious  sensibilities  than  mine. 

But  what  can  this  have  been  to  Jesus  Christ?  For 
this  was  what  now  befell  Him ;  this  was  the  tremendous 
cloud,  blacker  than  death,  which  now  enveloped  His 
soul. 

"The  mark  of  rank  in  nature 
Is  capacity  for  pain." 

And  to  be  able  to  conceive  His  capacity  for  such  pain, 
we  should  need  to  have  a  faith  in  God,  and  a  joy  in 
God,  and  a  nearness  to  God,  equal  to  His.  Never 
did  the  soul  of  all  sorrow  and  consternation  so  breathe 
in  any  word  as  in  that  long,  lonely  cry  from  the  Cross. 
Every  day  and  hour  until  now,  He  had  not  only  trusted 
in  God,  but  had  enjoyed  the  Father's  full  response  to 
His  trust.  He  had  been  conscious  that  He  and  the 
Father  were  one,  that  all  He  thought  and  desired  and 
willed  was  pleasing  in  the  Father's  sight.     Amid  all 


70  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

sorrows  and  disappointments,  when  men  rejected  Him 
and  wounded  His  spirit,  He  instinctively  turned  from 
earth  to  heaven,  from  the  bHnd  misjudgment  and  hate 
of  men  to  the  Hght  and  love  of  God.  Now  all  this  is 
in  a  moment  taken  away.  As  the  last  trial  of  His  faith 
and  obedience,  this  stream  of  loving  fellowship  and 
joyous  assurance  which  had  flowed  through  His  whole 
earthly  life  is  dried  up  at  the  source.  The  Divine  Spirit 
ceased  to  exercise  upon  Him  that  influence  which  brings 
light  and  comfort  to  the  soul.  That  it  should  have 
been  thus  with  Him — all  darkness,  gross  darkness  with 
Him  who  was  the  child  of  light,  that  He  who  was  the 
well-beloved  always  dwelling  in  the  Bosom  of  God 
should  seem  to  Himself  to  be  drifting  out  into  un- 
imaginable regions  of  chill  and  gloom  where  God  was 
not — this  is  one  of  the  most  amazing  facts  in  that 
life  where  all  is  amazing.  Yet  so  it  was.  Why  hast 
Thou  forsaken  me  ?  He  said.  He  was  well  accustomed 
by  this  time  to  being  forsaken  by  men.  But  this  was 
the  uttermost  desolation.  My  God,  my  God,  why  hast 
Thou  forsaken  me  ?  The  whole  world  has  cast  me  off. 
Thou  wast  all  I  had.  I  trusted  in  thee;  I  said  thou 
wouldst  be  with  me.  Why  hast  Thou  forsaken  me? 
And  He  was  sinking;  the  life-tide  was  ebbing  fast. 
The  cold  hand  of  Death  was  at  His  heart.  And  He 
could  bear  it  all — all  but  this,  that  God  should  let  Him 
die  thus,  without  a  word,  without  a  whisper  of  love 
to  His  soul,  forsaken,  abandoned  to  His  fate.  I  am 
trying  to  speak  of  what  is  far  beyond  any  man  to 
speak  of.  But  we  know  intuitively  that  here  was  the 
absolute  of  spiritual  suffering.  There  was  no  greater 
woe  the  soul  could  bear.     And  if  we  think  of  Christ 


WHY  HAST  THOU  FORSAKEN  ME?    71 

as  suffering  on  our  behalf,  as  the  Lamb  of  God  saving 
us  by  the  utter  completeness  of  His  sacrifice  and  obedi- 
ence, we  must  see  in  this  their  crown  and  masterpiece. 
Surely  He  hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our  sor- 
rows. The  Lord  hath  laid  on  Him  the  iniquities  of  us 
all.  For  this,  the  Beloved  lay  in  the  lowest  pit;  the 
abyss  heard  from  Him  the  cry  of  the  soul's  last  be- 
reavement and  desolation. 

But  in  these  words  of  Jesus  Christ  we  find  not 
only  the  absolute  of  suffering.  Shall  it  seem  para- 
doxical if  I  say  that  in  this  last  conflict  with  despair 
we  find  the  absolute  of  faith,  its  last  and  fiercest  trial, 
its  last  and  loftiest  triumph?  But  again  we  must  see 
intuitively  that  it  is  even  so.  Again  Christ  exhausts 
the  possibilities.  The  final  essence  of  all  faith  is 
in  these  words.  For  what  is  faith,  and  what  is  its 
triumph?  When  the  Psalmist  says,  I  will  sing  unto 
the  Lord,  because  he  hath  dealt  bountifully  with  me, 
that  is  something  which  all  men  can  understand — 
to  trust  God  and  be  thankful  unto  Him  when  He  is 
openly  and  unquestionably  kind.  But  is  the  triumph 
of  faith  to  trust  in  God  against  all  appearance,  to  say 
like  Job,  Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in  him? 
Is  it  a  still  greater  triumph  of  faith  when  it  rises 
superior  to  intellectual  and  moral  perplexities,  to  those 
questionings  of  the  soul  which  go  to  the  heart  of  all 
things,  to  trust  on  notwithstanding  all  that  in  a  world 
like  this  can  veil  God's  truth  and  obscure  His  love  and 
challenge  His  faithfulness?  Then  that  trial  and  tri- 
umph were  our  Lord's  to  the  last  degree  of  possibility. 
All  the  confusions  and  contradictions  of  this  perplexing 
world  were  focussed  upon  Calvary.    If  ever  there  have 


y2  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

been  time  and  place  where  it  could  be  said,  "There  is 
no  God,"  it  was  there.  It  was  the  hour  and  power 
of  darkness.  Falsehood  and  wrong  were  at  the  top 
of  their  triumph;  truth,  goodness,  and  love  crushed 
into  the  dust;  Caiaphas  and  Pilate  on  the  judgment 
seat,  Jesus  on  the  Cross.  How  hideous  a  chaos,  how 
God- forsaken  and  devil-ridden  did  the  world  appear! 
And  if  it  has  sometimes,  as  it  has  to-day,  that  godless 
look,  and  if  we  are  ever  in  that  place  of  temptation 
where  a  man  because  of  his  very  faith  in  the  living 
God  feels  himself  confounded  by  the  course  of  events, 
and  by  his  very  faith  is  compelled  to  ask  "Why" — 
"Why  is  it  thus  with  me?  Why  is  it  thus  with  the 
world?" — is  compelled  to  appeal  to  God  as  it  were 
against  Himself,  to  the  God  whom  the  soul  knows  and 
trusts  against  the  God  who  seems  to  permit  facts  to 
give  the  lie  to  His  justice  and  love,  let  us  remember 
that  our  Saviour  Himself  has  been  in  that  place.  As 
it  has  been  memorably  said,  All  the  millions  of  "whys" 
that  have  ever  risen  from  perplexed  souls  were  con- 
centrated in  that  "why"  of  Jesus  Christ. 

And  yet  more  than  this  is  present  in  His  experience. 
The  last  victory  of  faith  is  to  rise  superior  to  feeling, 
to  triumph  over  the  direct  consciousness  of  the  soul 
itself.  It  is  very  possible,  as  the  records  of  religious 
faith  so  often  show,  for  a  man  to  be  made  a  mark 
for  all  the  "slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune," 
to  seem  "smitten  of  God  and  afflicted,"  and  for  that 
man  to  feel  assuredly  in  his  heart  that  God  loves 
him,  and  even  with  such  a  heightened  assurance  that 
in  this  one  great  happiness  he  possesses  all  things. 
But  when  all  a  man  feels,  all  he  is  conscious  of,  is 


WHY  HAST  THOU  FORSAKEN  ME?    73 

darkness,  and  yet  he  stretches  out  his  hands  and 
struggles  towards  the  light,  this  is  faith  in  the 
highest  degree.  And  this  is  one  of  the  many  crowns 
upon  Christ's  head — the  crown  of  Faith.  He  feels 
despair,  only  despair,  yet  he  exercises  faith.  Feel- 
ing forsaken  of  God,  he  calls  only  the  more  upon 
God.  Think  how  through  that  awful  gloom  and  deso- 
lation of  feeling  the  faith  of  Jesus  stretches  forth  both 
its  hands  to  the  God  whose  love  He  could  not  feel,  and 
cries,  "My  God,  my  God."  All  God's  billows  go  over 
Him  and  bury  Him  in  darkness,  yet  in  the  depths  He 
clings  to  the  Rock.  ^  "As  one  in  deep  water,  feeling  no 
bottom,  makes  a  desperate  plunge  forward  and  stands 
on  solid  ground,  so  Jesus  in  the  very  act  of  uttering 
His  despair  overcomes  it.  Feeling  forsaken  of  God,  He 
rushes  into  the  arms  of  God;  and  these  close  around 
Him  in  loving  embrace."  The  darkness  passed  away; 
the  last  moments  were  full  of  God's  perfect  peace. 
The  last  victory  of  Faith  was  won. 

What  have  these  words  of  Jesus  to  say  to  us?  For 
one  thing,  this :  that  faith  in  God  is  always  a  victory ; 
always  it  has  a  resistance  to  overcome.  Sometimes  it 
has  been  persecution — the  scafifold,  and  the  stake ;  some- 
times it  is  the  appetites  and  desires  of  our  own  carnal 
nature;  sometimes  the  tyranny  of  worldly  opinion  and 
sentiment;  sometimes  the  confident  pretensions  of 
scepticism,  scoffing  at  all  spiritual  reality  as  an  empty 
dream;  sometimes  the  want  of  any  felt  assurance  in 
our  own  souls.  Always  faith  is,  more  or  less,  a 
struggle  and  a  victory. 


^Stalker's  Trial  and  Death  of  Jesus  Christ,  p.  230. 


74  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

For  another  thing,  this :  that  this  victory  is  assured 
to  us  only  through  Jesus  Christ.  In  these  days  I  think 
often  of  that  word  of  St.  Peter  in  his  First  Epistle — 
"You  who  by  Him  do  believe  in  God."  I  do  not  see 
how  in  this  world,  bathed  with  tears  and  blood,  turned 
upside  down  by  hate  and  devilishness,  one  can  believe 
in  God  except  by  Jesus  Christ  in  whom  we  have  learned 
to  see  God  Himself  bearing  the  cross  of  man's  sin  and 
misery.  I  think  also  of  that  other  word  which  speaks 
of  Christ  as  the  Leader  and  Perfecter  of  faith.  Leader 
and  Perfecter — yes,  in  His  personal  struggle  and  vic- 
tory lay  the  struggle  and  victory  of  all  mankind.  He 
knew.  He  passed  through,  the  absolute  worst,  and  by 
the  power  of  faith  turned  it  into  the  absolute  best. 
On  the  one  side  was  the  faith  of  that  solitary  man, 
hanging  on  a  cross;  on  the  other  the  whole  mustered 
forces  of  arrogant,  God-denying  evil.  And  Faith  tri- 
umphed. Brethren,  let  none  of  us  expect  to  escape  the 
trial  of  our  faith;  but  looking  unto  the  Leader  and 
Perfecter  we  shall  never  fail.  It  may  even  be  that  one 
day  we  may  have  to  taste  some  bitter  drop  of  that  last 
trial  of  faith — clinging  to  God  in  the  dark,  clinging  to 
God  without  feeling  that  He  is  near,  without  comfort 
or  joy  at  all,  trusting  just  because  God  is  God,  not 
because  we  feel  happy  in  doing  so.  Then  let  us  re- 
member that  He  who  of  all  the  sons  of  men  had  the 
fiercest  conflict  with  despair  became  by  that  very  con- 
flict the  Leader  and  Perfecter  of  Faith.  Remember  it 
now.  Some  of  us,  most  of  us,  I  trust,  come  to  the 
Lord's  Table  with  humble  yet  happy  confidence,  with 
deep,  quiet  joy  in  our  Saviour.  Yet  there  may  be  some 
who  will  come  with  hesitation,  with  hearts  that  feel 


WHY  HAST  THOU  FORSAKEN  ME?    75 

trustless,  loveless,  joyless,  without  conscious  response 
to  the  grace  of  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  I  bid  them 
remember,  and  let  us  all  remember,  that  His  promises 
and  gifts  are  not  to  our  feelings  but  to  our  faith,  our 
zvill  to  trust  Him,  and  to  trust  not  because  of  anything 
that  is  in  ourselves,  but  because  of  everything  that  is 
in  Him.  One  thing  alone  is  ours  by  right — Despair. 
But  He  who  has  borne  the  rest  of  our  burden  has  borne 
this  too,  and  has  transformed  it  into  Faith's  sublimest 
triumph.  What  He  did  for  us  He  can  do  in  us :  make 
strength  perfect  in  weakness,  and  faith  perfect  through 
our  fears.  Therefore,  my  brethren,  hold  fast  by  Him; 
and  let  your  prayer  be  this : 

Abide  with  me  from  morn  till  eve, 
For  without  thee  I  cannot  live. 
Abide  with  me  when  night  is  nigh, 
For  without  thee  I  dare  not  die. 


VI 

It  Is  Finished 

When  Jesus  therefore  had  received  the  vinegar,  he  said,  It 
is  finished. — John  19 :  30. 

It  is  finished.  In  themselves  the  words  are  colour- 
less. They  might  be  the  words  of  anyone  when  he 
comes  to  die,  and  on  different  lips  they  might  express 
widely  different  meanings.  They  might  be  words  of 
regretful  farewell:  the  last  candle  in  the  banqueting- 
hall  is  going  out,  and  the  lingering  guest  must  rise  and 
depart.  They  might  be  words  of  revolt  and  despair: 
this  life  was  all  I  had  for  pleasure,  for  work,  for  am- 
bition, and  now  it  is  finished  and  I  am  thrust  out  by  a 
cruel  fate  into  cold  oblivion  and  nothingness.  They 
might  be  words  of  relief:  life's  struggles  and  disap- 
pointments, the  fever  and  the  fret,  are  over  and  the 
weary  river  reaches  at  last  the  sea.  They  might  be 
words  of  simple  and  manly  acquiescence. 

Under  the  wide  and  starry  sky 
Dig  the  grave,  and  let  me  lie. 
Glad  did  I  live  and  gladly  die, 
And  I  laid  me  down  with  a  will. 

On  the  lips  of  Jesus  Christ  they  have  the  meaning  He 
alone  could  give  them.  They  are  the  proclamation  of 
a  victor,  the  confident  announcement  not  merely  that 
suffering  and  struggle  are  ended,  but  that  something 

76 


IT  IS  FINISHED  ^y 

has  been  for  ever  achieved,  securely  accomplished, 
something  that  will  never  have  to  be  repeated,  altered, 
or  supplemented,  and  from  which  nothing  can  ever  be 
taken  away. 

These  words  of  the  dying  Christ  are  the  supreme 
example  of  "the  ruling  passion  strong  in  death."  As 
tias  been  often  pointed  out,  they  carry  us  back  to  the 
first  words  of  His  which  have  been  recorded:  *'Wist 
ye  not  that  I  must  be  about  my  Father's  business?" 
Already  at  twelve  years  of  age  He  was  aware  of  a  busi- 
ness with  which  He  was  charged ;  already  the  impera- 
tive of  Heaven  was  laid  upon  His  young  soul;  and  as 
the  years  passed,  the  task  He  was  sent  to  fulfil  rose 
before  Him  in  always  more  clearly  developed  outline. 
Jesus  Christ  never  sauntered  through  life,  doing  now 
this  thing,  now  that  thing,  by  turns.  He  had  a  work 
to  do  and  to  finish.  This  was  the  concentrated  aim  of 
all  His  energies,  never  lost  sight  of,  never  interrupted, 
never  hurried  over,  pursued  without  haste,  without 
pause  or  faltering,  to  the  end.  When  He  came  within 
sight  of  the  end  and  spake  with  His  Father  concerning 
Himself,  this  was  His  thanksgiving  for  having  lived :  "I 
have  glorified  thee  upon  the  earth;  I  have  finished  the 
work  thou  gavest  me  to  do."  It  was  not  then  actually 
finished.  Gethsemane,  the  Judgment  hall.  Calvary,  still 
lay  in  front.  But  what  He  could  then  say  by  antici- 
pation He  now  affirms  with  His  expiring  breath:  "It 
is  finished." 

But  what  was  it  that  was  finished,  and  how  was  it 
finished?  There  are  two  things  about  that  work  of 
Jesus  Christ  which  fill  one  with  amazement;  the  one, 
the  divine  magnitude  of  the  enterprise;  the  other,  the 


78  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

divine  simplicity  of  the  means.  During  the  last  half 
century  criticism  has  been  fiercely  at  work  on  the 
Gospel  records,  on  the  history  of  the  early  Church, 
and,  at  the  heart  of  it  all,  on  the  self -consciousness  of 
Jesus  Christ.  And  I  venture  to  say  that,  in  my  judg- 
ment at  least,  the  result  of  that  criticism  has  been  to 
establish  more  firmly  the  fact  that  in  His  own  convic- 
tion Jesus  was  the  Messiah,  the  Christ  of  God,  the 
person  through  whom  the  Divine  Redemption  was  to 
come  to  the  world,  a  new  heavenly  era  to  be  ushered  in, 
through  whom  men  were  to  be  saved,  not  alone  from 
human  oppressions  or  the  minor  ills  of  Hfe,  but  from 
sin  and  death,  those  dread  tyrants  who  had  reigned 
so  long  and  with  so  undisputed  sway  that  their 
dominion  seemed  to  be  inseparable  from  man's  very 
existence.  That  was  the  astonishing  work  to  which 
Jesus  deliberately  addressed  Himself.  And  how  did 
He  address  himself  to  it?  By  organising  some  vast, 
ambitious  scheme  of  religious,  moral  and  political  re- 
form, with  international  committees  and  complex  rami- 
fications? He  began  just  with  Himself.  He  must  be 
the  living  centre,  the  protoplasmic  germ  of  the  whole. 
The  new  Kingdom  of  God  must  be  first  embodied  in 
Himself.  There  is  no  more  penetrating  interpretation 
of  the  method  of  Jesus  than  in  the  words  of  St.  Paul: 
"As  by  one  man's  disobedience  many  were  made  sin- 
ners, so  by  the  obedience  of  one  should  many  be  made 
righteous."  What  God  needed,  and  the  world  needed, 
was  the  one  man:  it  always  is.  If  there  was  one  man 
who  should  break  through  the  long  tradition  of  human 
sin  and  self-will,  and  live  out  the  will  of  God  in  the 
whole  round  of  human  existence,   one   who   should 


IT  IS  FINISHED  ?9 

"give  up  his  will  to  God's  will  from  dawn  to  twilight 
and  from  birth  to  death";  if  the  Father  could  get  one 
to  serve  him  thus,  the  consecration  of  that  perfect  life 
("not  by  water  only,  but  by  blood  also")  would  be  the 
sacrifice  that  would  atone  for  all  the  sin  and  loveless- 
ness  of  mankind.  In  that  one  man  the  world  would 
make  a  new  start.  A  new  spirit  would  be  infused  into 
its  Hfe.  He  would  be  the  beginning  of  a  new  lineage, 
a  new  order  of  humanity.  By  him  as  the  Leader  of 
salvation,  God  would  bring  many  sons  unto  glory. 

And  this  was  now  accomplished,  finished,  on  the 
Cross.  My  brethren,  we  must  never  take  our  eyes  off 
the  Cross.  If  we  look  away  from  the  Cross  we  shall 
forget  what  sin  is,  what  the  love  of  Christ  is,  the  sacri- 
ficial power  of  God  to  overcome  sin.  Yet  let  us  not 
misunderstand  the  Cross.  What  was  the  finished  sacri- 
fice of  the  Cross?  What  was  there  that  was  the  per- 
fect expression  of  the  will  of  God  and  that  was  of 
infinite  hope  for  the  world  ?  Theology  has  sometimes 
spoken  as  if  it  were  the  sufferings  of  the  Cross,  as 
such,  that  possessed  all  saving  virtue;  as  if  it  were  by 
the  mere  agonies  of  Gethsemane  and  Calvary  that  God 
was  well  pleased.  A  ghastly  idea,  that  goes  near  to 
bringing  down  our  God  and  Father  to  the  level  of  the 
bloodthirsty  deities  of  paganism.  What  virtue  is  there 
in  suffering  merely  as  suffering,  in  blood  merely  as 
blood,  in  death  merely  as  death,  to  please  God  and  to 
finish  His  work?  Blood,  agony,  death,  these  might 
satisfy  a  Moloch;  but  the  God  who  is  love — what  will 
satisfy  Him  and  fulfil  his  purpose?  Only  love,  love  to 
the  uttermost,  love  stronger  than  death.  The  God  of 
righteousness,  what  will  satisfy  Him  and  manifest  His 


8o  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

will?  Only  righteousness,  obedience  to  the  uttermost, 
faithfulness  stronger  than  death.  That  was  the  true 
sacrifice,  and  the  Cross  was  its  altar,  and  without  that 
altar  of  the  Cross  Christ  could  not  have  offered  the 
sacrifice.  Let  us,  I  say  again,  never  take  our  eyes  off  the 
Cross  with  its  blood,  its  agony,  its  death.  How  hideous 
in  themselves!  How  glorious  when  they  became  the 
chalice  into  which  Jesus  Christ  poured  the  soul  of  all 
love  and  truth  and  self-surrender!  And  now  it  was 
"finished";  that  living  sacrifice,  that  obedience  which 
exhausted  the  possibilities  of  obedience,  which  tran- 
scended all  the  obedience  of  earth  because  perfect  as 
that  of  Heaven,  and  all  the  obedience  of  Heaven 
because  wrought  out  amid  the  struggles,  temptations 
and  sorrows  of  earth,  obedience  as  divine  as  the  will  to 
which  it  was  rendered. 

And  now,  using  these  words,  "It  is  finished,"  as  a 
window  through  which  we  are  permitted  a  glimpse 
into  our  Saviour's  soul  as  He  hung  there  on  the  Cross, 
let  us  try  to  conceive  what  were  the  thoughts  and 
emotions  that  occupied  His  mind  and  stirred  His  heart. 
We  cannot  but  interpret  them  as,  in  the  first  place,  a 
cry  of  profoundest  thankfulness  and  relief.  Some  of 
you  have  had  an  ordeal  of  fierce  suffering  to  pass 
through,  or  have  finished  a  task  which  drained  all 
your  strength  and  resolution  in  the  doing,  and  you 
remember  still  the  sigh  of  relief  with  which  you  said : 
"There!  at  last  it  is  finished."  What  must  the  sensa- 
tion be  when  some  vast  enterprise  to  which  men  have 
braced  their  energies  for  half  a  life-time  is  finished, 
when  a  Newton  or  a  Kepler  has  made  the  last  of  ten 
thousand  calculations  which  adds  the  final  link  to  the 


IT  IS  FINISHED  8i 

long  chain  of  scientific  demonstration?  What  will  be 
the  feeling  of  our  war-worn  battalions,  of  the  nation 
and  the  whole  world,  when  it  can  be  said  of  the  War 
that  it  is  finished?  But  beyond  all  parallel  must  have 
been  the  relief  with  which  Jesus  Christ  now  saw  His 
work  on  earth  as  a  thing  done,  never  to  be  done  again. 
Yes,  I  say  relief;  for  His  nature  was  our  nature.  He 
loved  His  work ;  it  was  no  enforced  task.  He  was  the 
Good  Shepherd,  and  in  His  love  rejoiced  to  lay  down 
His  life  for  the  sheep.  Had  it  been  to  do  over  again, 
then  over  again  He  would  have  done  it.  But  there  was 
another  side  to  His  experience.  You  remember  how  He 
set  his  face,  with  the  rigidity  of  self-mastering  resolve, 
to  go  to  Jerusalem,  every  step  a  triumph  over  flesh  and 
blood.  And  how  when  the  worst  came,  He  was  con- 
strained to  say:  "If  it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass 
from  me."  And  now  that  cup  has  been  put  into  His 
hand  for  the  last  time,  full,  full  of  its  awful  draught, 
and  He  has  drunk  it  to  the  dregs.  And  we  cannot  but 
hear  the  tone  of  almost  inexpressible  relief  in  the  cry 
with  which  He  set  aside  that  cup,  now  empty  for  ever. 
And  as  we  follow  Him  through  the  tragic  experience  of 
His  passion,  how  we  rejoice  to  come  with  Him  to  this 
glad  end !  The  treachery,  the  mockery,  the  forsaking 
by  man  and  by  God,  the  darkness  without  and  within 
— all  are  past,  never  to  return.  It  is  finished.  Soon 
now  shall  the  weary  Toiler,  the  agonising  Sufferer, 
be  at  rest. 

And  yet  far  more  we  hear  in  that  word  the  tone 
of  conscious  triumph.  What  triumph  is  there  like  the 
victory  of  finished  work?  But  think  of  that  triumph 
in  whatsoever  instance  you  will — in  the  humblest  work- 


82  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

man  who  turns  out,  as  perfect  as  he  can  make  it,  the 
article  into  which  he  has  put  something  of  his  creative 
self;  the  poet  writing  the  last  line  of  his  epic;  the 
painter  putting  the  last  touch  to  the  masterpiece  of  his 
art;  the  explorer  penetrating  at  last  the  long-hidden 
secret  of  a  dark  continent;  even  the  apostle  writing 
within  sight  of  the  scaffold,  *1  have  fought  a  good 
fight,  I  have  finished  my  course,  I  have  kept  the  faith" 
— which  of  them  can  offer  more  than  a  remote  parallel 
to  the  triumph  of  that  crucified  Man  as  He  sees  lying 
behind  Him  His  great  work,  as  He  says  of  "the  most 
glorious  thing  ever  done  in  the  universe,"  It  is  finished? 
It  is  too  stupendous  for  our  minds  to  take  in.  They  can 
only  touch  it  as  our  hands  may  touch  the  base  of  some 
tall  cliff.  They  cannot  put  themselves  around  it,  nor 
stretch  themselves  to  its  altitude.  Yet  with  our  souls 
we  can  feel  its  reality,  can  touch  it  and  thrill  at  the 
touch.  Jesus  Christ,  on  the  Cross,  suffering  a  male- 
factor's doom,  dying  amid  the  jeers  of  the  rabble  and 
the  curses  of  the  priests,  is  the  one  entirely  victorious 
man  that  has  ever  lived.  He  has  put  sin  and  the  world 
under  his  feet,  and  death  remains  only  as  "the  tri- 
umphal arch  through  which  the  conqueror  passes  into 
the  city,  where  the  throne  and  the  crown  await  him." 
And,  further,  the  Christian  mind  always  feels  this 
word  as  a  proclamation  to  the  world.  The  lonely 
sufferer  was  addressing  no  audience  except  Himself. 
His  loud  cry  was  simply  the  spontaneous  utterance  of 
intense  emotion.  But  it  has  gone  out  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth  declaring  to  all  ages  that  that  is  finished  which 
in  verity  brings  the  divine  salvation  nigh  to  sinful 
men.     It  is,  as  one  has  said,  Christ  preaching  Christ 


IT  IS  FINISHED  83 

and  Him  crucified.  We  hear  nowadays  much  less  of 
Christ's  "finished  work"  than  our  fathers  did.  As 
coins  by  too  often  passing  from  hand  to  hand  lose 
their  brightness  and  the  sharpness  of  their  imprint 
and  need  to  be  reminted,  so  theological  formulae  and 
religious  phrases,  when  they  are  overworked,  become 
trite  and  outworn,  and  instead  of  stimulating  serve 
rather  to  smother  thought  and  feeling.  The  living 
thought  of  each  generation  must  create  its  own  forms 
of  expression;  and  one  would  hope  that  nothing  more 
than  this  is  implied  in  the  disuse  of  the  venerable 
phrase,  Christ's  "finished  work."  For  my  part,  I  am 
not  ashamed  of  it  nor  averse  to  using  it.  Something 
was  finished  on  the  Cross,  an  immeasurable  thing,  the 
absolute  spiritual  sacrifice  in  which  the  Divine  love  took 
upon  itself  the  burden  and  the  guilt  of  sinful  humanity, 
that  sacrifice  which  we  must  accept,  to  which  we  must 
consent  to  be  indebted,  on  which  we  must  cast  our 
souls  in  utter  reliance,  and  which  we  must  lay  upon  our 
souls  till  they  kindle  with  its  fire  of  purity  and  love; 
that  eternal  thing  with  which  we  must  begin  and  in 
which  we  must  ever  abide.  If  this  Gospel  of  the 
''finished  work"  means  that  in  order  to  obtain  pardon, 
peace  with  God  and  eternal  redemption,  there  is  noth- 
ing for  you  to  do,  nothing  to  suffer,  nothing  to  give, 
but  to  commit  yourself  and  all  your  mass  of  needs  to 
Christ,  that  is  the  Gospel  which  with  my  heart's  deepest 
conviction  I  preach  to  you  now.  "It  is  finished."  It  is 
the  proclamation  that  He  has  rolled  away  the  stone 
from  the  sepulchre  in  which  humanity  was  entombed, 
and  now  He  calls  us  to  arise  and  come  forth.  It  bids 
us  come  in  all  our  poverty  and  prodigal's  rags  to  our 


84  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

Father's  house,  where  there  is  bread  enough  and  to 
spare.  The  way  is  clear;  the  door  is  open;  and  He  is 
waiting  with  welcoming  arms  for  every  one  who  would 
enter  into  life. 

And  there  is  yet  another  thought  which  the  great 
word  irresistibly  suggests  to  me,  the  thought  of  Christ's 
unfinished  work.     That  is  a  thought  we  cannot  begin 
even  to  outline;  it  fills  the  whole  future,  in  time  and 
eternity,  of  men,  nations,  empires,  the  world,  the  uni- 
verse, things  visible  and  things  invisible,  things  on  the 
earth  and  things  in  the  heavens.    The  one  point  I  take 
is  that  the  work  of  Jesus  Christ  was  at  that  moment 
finished  only  because  it  was  the  perfected  beginning  of 
a  work  that  never  will  be,  never  can  be,  finished.    The 
life  of  Christ  was  as  it  were  a  seed  filled  with  all  the 
fulness  of  God;  and  what  was  now  finished  was  just 
the  sowing  of  the  seed  that  it  might  bring  forth  its 
divine  fruit  in  other  lives  without  end  for  ever.    And 
it  is  in  no  other  sense  that  any  life  on  earth  can  ever 
be  truly  finished  and  complete.     The  broken  column 
in  the  churchyard  sometimes  seems  to  us  the  fittest 
symbol  of  all  human  life  and  achievement.     Every- 
where is  unfinished  work,  purposes  broken  oflf,  aspira- 
tion unrealised,  promise  unfulfilled.     Life  is  crowded 
with  beginnings,  made  up  of  broken  fragments.    Bless 
God  for  it !    Only  what  is  of  the  earth  earthy  is  ever 
complete.    This  life  is  not  meant  to  be  a  circle  closing 
us  in;  it  is  a  path  leading  us  elsewhere.     The  incom- 
pleteness is  the  mark  of  the  greatness. 

A  German  theologian  prophesied  some  time  ago  that 
the  hope  of  immortality  would  count  for  less  and  less 
in  the  religion  of  the  future,  and  would  ultimately 


IT  IS  FINISHED  85 

disappear.  He  spoke  before  the  War,  and  then  he  did 
speak  with  some  apparent  warrant.  There  is  no  doubt 
about  it.  The  hope  of  immortaHty  was  counting  for 
less  in  our  rehgion,  far  less,  than  it  has  a  right  to  count 
for.  But  the  prophet  spoke  before  the  War.  That 
hope  is  to-day  more  real  and  more  precious  than  ever. 
The  need  of  it  is  always  with  us;  for  time  and  fate 
seem  always  the  most  fitful  and  capricious  of  agents, 
whose  operations  have  no  regard  to  the  completeness 
of  our  lives.  But  to-day,  when,  obeying  the  call  of 
duty,  men  are  cut  down  in  swathes  long  before  the 
scythe  of  time  had  any  claim  upon  them,  their 
dreams  and  ambitions  all  unrealised,  their  expectation 
cut  off — if  that  were  all,  if  thus  it  were  finished,  then, 
"Lord,  what  is  man?  His  days  are  like  unto  vanity." 
But  look  away  to  Calvary;  for  it  is  wonderful  how, 
from  whatever  point  of  the  moral  compass  we  look, 
we  find  there  the  centre  of  light.  Just  so  as  regards 
time  and  circumstances  Jesus  finished  his  course.  He 
too  finished  it  early,  finished  it  violently,  tragically.  He 
was  taken  away  in  the  midst  of  his  days.  In  a  sense, 
no  one  ever  left  so  much  undone,  laid  down  a  life  of 
such  unexhausted  power.  Yet  all  was  finished,  all  He 
came  into  the  world  to  do.  What  is  it  that  makes  life 
full  and  complete?  Only  that  which  made  His  life 
complete — doing  the  will  of  God.  You  and  I  may 
not  get  time  and  strength  to  do  our  own  will,  to  carry 
out  our  own  plans ;  almost  certainly  we  shall  not.  But 
for  doing  the  will  of  God,  for  carrying  out  His  pur- 
pose in  our  lives — brethren,  there  is  an  appointed  time 
to  man  upon  the  earth,  and  it  is  for  that  it  is  appointed. 
And  if  our  hearts  are  truly  set  with  Christ's  heart 


86  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

to  do  that  Divine  will  and  day  by  day  to  be  faithful  at 
the  post  of  duty,  then,  whether  it  be  in  the  springtime 
of  life,  or  in  its  summer-prime,  or  in  the  autumn  of 
patriarchal  age,  we  too  shall  be  able  to  lay  our  life  and 
our  life's  work  at  the  Master's  feet,  and  say,  "Such  as 
it  is,  with  all  the  sins  that  need  Thy  forgiveness,  all  the 
flaws  that  need  Thy  mending,  it  is  finished." 


VII 
Into  Thy  Hands 

And  when  Jesus  had  cried  with  a  loud  voice,  he  said,  Father, 
into  thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit. — Luke  23 :  46. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  one  notable  difference  be- 
tween the  rehgion  of  to-day  and  that  of  an  earHer  time 
is,  that  we  now  regard  rehgion  as  having  been  given 
to  teach  us  how  to  hve  rather  than  how  to  die.  There 
is  a  certain  truth  in  the  statement.  One  sometimes 
feels  that  the  piety  of  a  past  generation  was  too  much 
**sickhed  o'er"  by  the  pallor  of  the  tomb;  sometimes 
it  spoke  as  if  a  peaceful  or  triumphant  deathbed  were 
religion's  grandest  achievement.  The  change  of 
emphasis  is  a  wholesome  one;  and  yet  what  God  hath 
joined  we  must  not  put  asunder.  Not  life,  not  death, 
but  life  and  death,  as  they  form  our  human  lot,  form 
also  our  religious  problem;  and  unless  otir  religion  is 
of  that  kind  which  can  meet  us  in  the  depths  and 
accompany  us  in  the  last  solitude,  it  fails  us  in  all. 

Now  the  one  dying  of  which  the  Bible  contains  any- 
thing approaching  to  a  full  account  is  the  dying  of  the 
Lord  Jesus.  As  a  rule,  it  preserves  a  remarkable 
reticence  regarding  the  last  moments  and  experiences 
and  utterances  of  the  saints  and  sinners  whose  lives  it 
records;  but  every  word  uttered  by  our  Lord  Jesus 
during  the  last  hours  of  that  mortal  life  which  he 
offered  up  for  our  salvation  seems  to  have  been  religi- 

87 


88  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

ously  preserved  by  one  or  other  of  the  evangelists.  And 
this  evening  we  come  to  the  last  of  these.  With  the 
cry,  "It  is  finished,"  He  had  said  farewell  to  the  life 
of  earth.  All  its  elements  of  labour  and  sorrow  and 
apparent  failure  are  summed  up  in  those  words,  and, 
so  summed  up,  are  turned  into  the  elements  of  final 
victory  and  perfect  thanksgiving.  Now  with  this  word 
of  calm  prayer  He  addresses  Himself  to  the  soul's  last 
journey,  its  passage  to  the  world  to  come.  And  price- 
less are  these  words,  priceless  as  unique,  which  reveal 
to  us  what  death  was  to  Jesus  when  He  was  in  its  very 
presence,  in  its  very  grasp,  in  the  very  act  of  submis- 
sion to  its  power.  They  do  not  enable  us  to  follow  Him, 
or  any  other,  across  the  silent  river,  but  His  last 
thought  in  the  moment  of  pushing  off  from  the  shore, 
this  they  give  us. 

And,  first,  they  reveal  to  us  that  Jesus  made  of  death 
an  act,  a  voluntary  act.  In  dying  He  is  not  merely 
passive;  He  does  something;  there  is  an  act  of  will  by 
which  He  finally  surrenders  Himself  into  the  Father's 
protection  and  keeping.  We  are  not  wont  to  think  of 
death  as  a  voluntary  act;  we  think  of  it  as  the  last 
pathetic  spectacle  of  human  weakness  rather  than  as 
the  last  exercise  of  human  power.  It  is  appointed  to 
all  men  once  to  die,  and  there  is  no  resisting  nor  evad- 
ing that  appointment.  Ready  like  corn  ripe  for  the 
sickle,  or  in  the  green  lustihood  of  youth  and  vigour; 
full  of  miseries  so  that  the  end  comes  as  a  welcomed 
relief,  or  with  life's  brimming  cup  scarcely  tasted — 
when  the  hour  comes  man  must  depart.  Man  cometh 
forth  as  a  flower  and  is  cut  down;  he  fleeth  also  as  a 
shadow  and  continueth  not.     But  we  can  never  asso- 


INTO  THY  HANDS  89 

date  such  thoughts  as  these  with  the  death  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Not  that  He  did  not  suffer  the  stroke  of 
mortahty  in  the  inevitable  human  way,  by  natural 
physical  causes.  I  do  not  mean  that.  I  do  not  believe, 
with  some  great  theologians  like  St.  Augustine,  that 
it  was  only  by  the  direct,  miraculous  act  of  His  own 
will  that  He  could  die,  and  did  die.  When  I  say  that 
our  Lord  made  of  dying  a  voluntary  act,  I  mean  that 
His  thought  never  rested  in  what  we  call  natural  causes, 
but  always  beyond  them  saw  His  Father's  hand  order- 
ing all  things;  and  that  now  in  death,  as  throughout 
His  life,  He  recognised  no  necessity  except  the  Father's 
will.  And  that  will  He  now  made  His  own.  Here  was 
no  feeling  of  submitting  to  a  mere  inevitable  fact  or 
irresistible  fate.  He  is  not  snatched  out  of  life, 
nor  dragged  away  by  an  iron  law  of  nature.  In  the 
last  moments  He  is  not  face  to  face  with  the  spectral 
power  we  call  Death.  He  is  face  to  face  with  the 
Father,  and  in  trustful,  loving  obedience  yields  Him- 
self into  the  hands  of  God. 

Think  of  it.  In  a  moment  He  was  to  be  dead,  to 
have  no  more  part  in  all  that  is  done  under  the  sun. 
He  was  to  be  dead  in  every  sense  that  makes  the  death 
of  a  living,  breathing  man  that  pathetic  and  irrever- 
sible event  over  which  all  generations  mourn.  And 
He  willed  that  it  should  be  so.  *Tt  is  finished,"  He 
cried;  "Father,  into  thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit." 
The  last  enemy,  says  St.  Paul,  is  Death;  and  it  is 
here,  surely,  we  see  the  last  victory  it  is  given  to 
man  to  win.  As  Christ  could  conquer  temptation  only 
by  grappling  with  temptation's  utmost  power,  and 
suffering  only  by  suffering,  so  He  could  overcome 


90  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

death  only  by  dying  and  in  dying.  We  constantly 
speak  of  Jesus  as  the  conqueror  of  Death;  but  what  do 
we  mean  by  it?  Where  is  it  we  see  Him  most  glori- 
ously triumphant  over  the  power  of  Death?  When  He 
stood  at  the  mouth  of  the  tomb  and  the  dead  heard 
His  voice  and  came  forth?  No.  When  He  Himself 
arose  in  the  strength  of  His  immortal  life?  Not  even 
there,  I  think.  But  here,  here  on  the  Cross,  where  He 
seems  to  be  Death's  victim,  given  over  to  it  as  a  prey, 
here  where  in  mortal  weakness  He  faces  Death  as 
mortal  man  has  to  face  it.  He  looks  into  the  darkness 
and  fears  it  not.  He  advances  to  meet  it  with  the  same 
salutation  with  which  He  had  met  every  duty  and  every 
event — Lo,  I  come  to  do  thy  will,  O  God;  and  as  He 
had  made  of  all  things  else  His  stepping-stones,  so 
He  made  of  this  last  descent  of  self -surrender  the 
last  stepping-stone  up  to  the  throne  of  His  moral 
sovereignty.  That  is  what  I  mean  by  saying  that  Jesus 
made  of  death  a  voluntary  act.  In  dying  He  lived,  lived 
intensely,  not  with  the  intensity  of  struggle — that  was 
past — but  with  the  calm  intensity  of  faith. 

For  these  words  of  the  Lord  Jesus  reveal  his  dying 
as  an  act  of  will  because  it  was  an  act  of  faith. 
The  word  here  translated  ^  "commend"  is  one  of  those 
which  in  the  Bible  belong  distinctively  to  the  vocabulary 
of  Faith.  It  is  the  same  word  which  St.  Paul,  for 
example,  uses  in  his  great  confession :  "I  know  whom 
I  have  believed,  and  am  persuaded  that  he  is  able  to 


^In  other  passages  translated  "commit."  In  older  English  the 
two  words  are  synonymous.  While  we  speak  of  "committing" 
to  memory  or  to  writing,  it  spoke  of  "commending." 


INTO  THY  HANDS  91 

keep  that  which  I  have  committed  unto  him  against 
that  day."  The  word  literally  means  to  ^'deposit,"  as 
when  persons  deposit  their  valuables  with  their  banker 
for  safe  custody,  because  for  the  time  they  are  unable 
to  guard  them  under  their  own  hand.  Such  is  the 
meaning  here.  As  when  we  fall  into  the  unconscious- 
ness of  sleep,  our  spirits,  our  conscious  selves,  pass  out 
of  our  own  possession  and  control,  and  must  be  kept  for 
us  somehow,  by  some  one,  until  we  awake,  so  our  Lord, 
about  to  fall  into  that  sleep  from  which  one  does 
not  awake  in  this  world,  places  His  spirit  as  a  sacred 
deposit  in  His  Father's  hands,  to  be  held  and  safely 
kept  for  Him  until  He  awake  on  the  other  side  of 
death. 

It  is  an  act  of  faith,  and  the  light  of  faith  is  the 
only  light  that  can  shine  upon  that  hour.  Of  what 
it  is  to  die,  experience  has  nothing,  never  can  have 
anything  to  say. 

Strange,  is  it  not,  that  of  the  myriads  who 
Before  us  passed  the  gates  of  darkness  through, 
Not  one  returns  to  tell  us  of  the  road, 
Which  to  discover  we  must  travel  too? 

"Which  to  discover  we  must  travel  too."  It  is,  and  to 
the  end  of  time  must  be,  altogether  unknown  and  un- 
imaginable. We  all  become  familiar  with  the  outward 
aspect  of  death.  We  may  have  seen  others  die.  We 
may  have  followed  the  departing  up  to  the  gates  of  the 
unseen,  to  the  last  flicker  of  expiring  consciousness. 
But  there  the  veil  falls.  "Twilight  and  evening-bell,  and 
after  that — the  Dark!"  And  it  might  be  only  that — 
the  great  darkness,  to  go  we  know  not  where,  to  be- 


92  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

come  we  know  not  what.  The  one  ray  in  that  dark- 
ness is  the  star  of  Faith.  We  can  beheve,  and  do 
believe,  that  the  other  side  of  this  falhng  asleep  is  the 
soul's  awaking  to  the  consciousness  of  another  world. 
We  can  believe,  and  do  believe,  that  the  passage  from 
the  one  state  of  being  to  the  other  is  brief;  instan- 
taneous, it  may  be;  that  soon  as  the  light  of  this  world 
fades,  the  light  of  that  other  world  begins  to  dawn. 
But  we  can  only  believe  it;  until  we  ourselves  make 
the  journey,  we  cannot  know  what  it  is  to  cross  that 
mysterious  frontier. 

And  these  words  of  our  Lord,  "Father,  into  thy 
hands  I  commend  my  spirit,''  show  that  in  this  also 
He  was  made  like  unto  His  brethren.  He  walked  by 
faith,  not  by  sight.  We  cannot,  indeed,  measure  His 
faith  by  any  experience  of  our  own.  He  was  holy; 
He  was  heavenly;  all  His  life  He  had  been  looking  to 
that  Eternal  World  to  which  He  was  now  going;  His 
communications  with  it  were  constant  and  vivid  far 
beyond  anything  we  can  know.  Yet  it  was  by  faith 
He  thus  lived,  and  now  it  is  in  faith  He  addresses  Him- 
self to  the  last  act  of  all.  This  was  a  way  He  had  not 
trod  before,  an  unknown  journey  for  which  He  could 
only  bespeak  His  Father  beforehand  to  be  the  guide 
and  guardian  of  His  spirit.  This  was  the  faith  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  in  dying.  He  looked  into  the  darkness  and 
through  the  darkness.  He  looked  with  the  eye  of 
Faith  and  saw,  not  the  hands  of  Death  with  their 
cold  and  terrible  clutch  to  drag  Him  down  into  its  gulf, 
but  the  mighty  and  gentle  hands  of  God,  stretched  out 
to  draw  Him  near.  And  into  that  safe  and  blessed 
keeping  He  gave  His  spirit  up  with  the  repose  of  abso- 


INTO  THY  HANDS  93 

lute  trust,  with  the  ineffable  content  of  one  whose 
painful,  weary  journey  is  ended  and  who  can  at  last 
lay  him  down  and, take  his  rest. 

*Tather,  into  thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit." 
There  is  a  very  exquisite  association  connected  with 
these  words.  Except  the  word  ^'Father,"  which  is  our 
Lord's  own,  they  are  a  quotation  from  the  thirty- 
first  Psalm;  and  they  form  part  of  the  evening  prayer 
which  devout  Jewish  mothers  are  still  wont  to  teach 
their  little  ones  when  lying  down  to  sleep  at  night.  ^ 
In  the  humble  home  at  Nazareth  one  might  have  heard 
Mary  teaching  the  child  Jesus  to  repeat  them,  as  even- 
ing by  evening  He  lay  down  in  the  happy  rest  of  child- 
hood. And  now,  in  the  last  twilight,  closing  life's 
heavy-laden  day,  it  is  with  the  prayer  of  His  childhood 
still  upon  His  lips  that  He  betakes  Himself  to  the  last 
repose. 

Such  was  the  faith  in  which  the  Lord  Jesus  met 
and  conquered  Death;  and  only  He  can  make  us 
partakers  of  that  faith.  Science  and  philosophy,  all 
the  best  teachers  of  our  race,  apart  from  Christ,  are 
vague  and  cheerless  as  to  that  last  voyage  in  which, 
once  we  quit  the  shore,  "no  star  will  guide  us  back." 
The  religion  of  Christ  is  the  only  religion  to  live  in 
and  to  die  in.  That  religion  is  utterly  fearless;  those 
in  whom  its  light  has  been  kindled  have  never  feared 
the  last  enemy  except  when  their  faith  has  suffered  a 
momentary  eclipse.  Not  only  is  that  religion  fearless, 
it  is  full  of  visions,  it  is  ablaze  with  hope.  "It  fills 
the  night  of  Death  with  innumerable  stars;  all  the 


V.  Authorised  Daily  Prayer  Book,  by  Israel  Abrahams,  p.  329. 


94  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

promises  of  God  light  up  the  darkening  vision  of 
earth's  closing  hours."  *1  see  the  heavens  opened  and 
the  Son  of  Man  standing  at  the  right  hand  of  God." 
"Henceforth  there  is  laid  up  for  me  a  crown  of 
righteousness." 

But  may  not  all  this  be  a  pleasing  fantasy,  a  mirage 
that  only  reflects  the  image  of  our  own  desires?  I 
cannot  give  you  coercive  logical  proof  that  it  is  not; 
no  man  can.  No  man  can  prove  in  that  way  that  all 
the  truths  we  hold  truest  and  all  the  things  we  hold 
most  sacred  are  not  delusions.  All  the  truths  by  which 
our  souls  live  we  hold  by  no  other  tenure  than  the 
certitude  of  faith.  But  this  is  to  be  said — not  unless 
the  whole  Christian  conception  of  life  is  a  freak  of  the 
imagination,  unless  the  Cross  of  Christ  and  all  it 
stands  for,  the  reality  of  the  spiritual,  the  Kingdom  of 
God,  the  supremacy  of  right,  the  good  fight  of  faith, 
the  life  of  love  and  service  and  self-sacrifice — not 
unless  all  this  is  a  fair  but  unsubstantial  dr&am  can 
the  Christian  hope  in  death  be  unreal.  Christianity  is 
one  and  indivisible,  and  if  its  faith  in  the  divine  mean- 
ing of  life  is  true,  its  faith  in  the  divine  meaning  of 
death  cannot  be  false. 

Consider  once  more  this  faith  of  Christ  in  the  face 
of  death ;  consider  what  it  was,  and  how  it  may  be  ours. 
It  was  bound  up  indissolubly  with  His  faith  in  God; 
it  was  summed  up  in  that  word  "Father."  That  one 
word  was,  you  might  say,  the  creed  of  Jesus  Christ. 
It  expressed  to  him  the  centre  and  the  sum  of  all 
reality.  It  expressed  His  certainty  of  the  Almighty 
Love  and  Goodness  and  Joy  that  are  at  the  heart  of  all 
things.     God  is:  God  is  God,  One  whose  presence 


INTO  THY  HANDS  95 

and  power  permeate  all  things,  in  whose  thought  and 
will  all  live  and  move  and  have  their  being;  and  this 
God  is  our  Father  who  knows  each  of  us,  cares  for 
each,  loves  each  of  us  with  a  love  that  cannot  let  us 
go,  to  which  our  redemption  and  perfection  are  an 
everlasting  necessity.  From  the  beginning  of  the  Gos- 
pel, this  is  Christ's  great  truth.  He  begins  by  calling  us 
to  trust  the  Father  for  the  life  of  the  present.  He  bids 
us  observe  how  He  cares  for  the  least  of  His  creatures 
— the  bird  of  the  air,  the  flower  of  the  field — gives 
them  a  home  in  His  world,  and  provides  for  them  all 
things  needful  to  the  full  and  happy  development  of 
the  life  for  which  He  has  made  them.  And  if  for 
them,  how  much  more  for  us.  His  children.  Thus 
does  He  teach  us  to  trust  the  Father  for  the  life  that 
now  is,  to  ask  and  receive  each  day  our  daily  bread, 
to  fear  nothing  but  sin,  and  be  anxious  for  nothing  but 
to  do  the  Father's  will.  And  now  if  we  have  learned 
that  lesson.  He  bids  us  take  the  next  step  and  learn 
another;  by  His  own  calm  faith  in  the  very  article  of 
death  He  bids  us  trust  our  Father  in  death  and  for 
what  comes  after  death  as  much  as  for  the  morrow. 
And  it  is  not  only  reasonable,  it  is  inevitable  that  we 
should  do  so.  If  you  trust,  you  trust.  You  cannot  draw 
a  line  on  this  side  of  which  you  will  trust  but  beyond 
which  you  will  not.  You  cannot  trust,  really  trust,  sl 
man  for  five  dollars  and  be  unable  to  trust  him  for  ten. 
You  cannot  thus  both  trust  and  distrust  your  fellow- 
man.  Nor  can  you  trust  God  for  the  morrow  and 
not  trust  him  for  the  day  after,  for  a  hundred  or  a 
thousand  years  hence,  for  all  eternity.  *Tather,  into 
thy  hands   I   commend   my   spirit."     By   that  word 


96  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

Jesus  Christ  says  to  us:  "If  you  have  known  the 
Father,  if  you  have  trusted  Him  in  Hfe,  you  cannot 
but  trust  Him  in  death.  You  cannot  drift  beyond  His 
love  and  care.  You  cannot  take  too  hopeful  a  view  of 
what  is  to  come  after  this  mortal  life.  It  is  a  step 
not  into  the  dark  but  into  the  light.  You  may  not, 
indeed  you  cannot,  know  what  old  needs  will  disappear 
and  what  new  needs  arise,  when  you  have  changed 
this  manner  of  existence  for  another  so  different;  but 
joyfully  commit  all  to  the  Father.  In  His  house  there 
are  many  mansions,  and  there,  as  here,  He  will  give 
the  most  and  the  best  you  are  capable  of  receiving." 

And  so  this  word  from  the  Cross  comes  to  us  with 
the  greatest  of  all  questions  and  the  most  urgent  of 
all  messages.  The  one  thing  in  this  world  we  all 
certainly  have  to  do,  and  can  do  only  once,  is  to  die. 
How  shall  we  be  able  to  do  that  thing?  How  shall 
we  do — you  and  I — in  the  swellings  of  Jordan?  I  put 
that  question,  and  I  can  imagine  that  some  of  you 
would  make  reply  that  there  are  many  questions  for 
you  to  answer  which  are  more  profitable  and  more 
urgent  than  that.  And  you  may  be  right,  and  also 
you  may  be  wrong,  in  what  you  mean.  If  you  mean 
that  the  immediately  pressing  question  is  not  as  to 
one's  preparedness  for  death,  but  is  whether  one  is 
properly  fit  to  live,  you  are  altogether  in  the  right. 
Yet  to  put  the  one  question  may  help  us  to  answer 
the  other.  To  live  rightly  is  the  only  preparation 
needed,  the  only  preparation  possible,  for  dying  rightly. 
The  fitness  is  the  same.  But  it  is  the  same ;  and  while 
I  do  not  want  any  one  to  think  of  life  mainly  as  a 
preparation  for  death  or  to  regard  its  journey  as  a 


INTO  THY  HANDS  97 

march  daily  nearer  to  the  grave,  while  I  would  not 
have  any  one  entertain  so  morbid  a  conception,  I  do 
want  you  all  to-night  to  face  this  question  as  honestly 
as  you  can — Would  I  be  willing  to  die  in  the  life  I  am 
now  living?  Surely  that  is  the  test  of  the  rightness. 
Apply  it.  Men  die  as  they  live.  The  unholy  man  dies 
in  his  unholiness,  the  fool  in  his  folly;  the  pharisee 
dies  a  pharisee,  the  soldier  fighting  for  the  right  dies  as 
a  hero  lighting  for  the  right,  the  man  who  lives  trusting 
in  God  dies  trusting  in  God.  As  to  ourselves,  then, 
could  we  die  willingly  and  well  in  the  life  we  are  now 
living  ? 

Let  this  word  of  Jesus  tell  us  again  what  that  life 
is  in  which  a  man  can  die  wilHngly  and  well.  It  is  the 
life  that  is  inspired  by  that  word  "Father,"  the  life  of 
trust  in  a  God  who  is  eternal  and  unchangeable,  who 
has  made  us  for  Himself,  who  in  creating  us  has  bound 
our  lives  to  His  by  ties  which  on  His  side  cannot 
be  severed,  who  loves  us  in  our  weakness,  loves  us  in 
our  sinfulness,  whose  love  sent  His  Christ  to  bring  us 
back  to  Himself  from  the  darkness  of  our  sin  and  the 
estrangement  of  our  hearts ;  it  is  the  life  of  trust  in  that 
Divine  Father  and  of  obedience  to  His  will,  the  life  that 
is  lived  not  for  self,  not  for  temporary  trivial  things, 
but  for  doing  right,  for  fighting  the  good  fight  and 
fulfilling  the  service  of  love;  in  the  one  word  that 
includes  and  illumines  all,  it  is  the  life  of  following 
Christ.  ^'Father,  into  thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit." 
That  was  His  last  prayer;  but  it  was  only  the  final 
utterance  of  that  which  had  inspired  His  whole  life. 
Every  day,  in  its  venture  of  faith,  in  its  doing  of  the 
Father's  work,  He  had  invested  His  all  in  the  Father's 


98  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

service  and  intrusted  it  to  the  Father's  keeping.  Let 
such  be  our  Hfe,  and  such  too  will  be  the  end  that 
crowns  the  work.  Life  is  robbed  of  its  terrors  if  we 
know  the  Father,  for  our  times  are  in  His  hands;  and 
death  will  be  no  fearful  adventure,  but  a  passing  more 
than  ever  into  those  hands  which  safely  keep  and 
increase  and  glorify  all  that  is  committed  to  their 
eternal  guardianship. 


VIII 
Strength  and  Beauty 

And  upon  the  top  of  the  pillars  was  lily- work;  so  was  the 
work  of  the  pillars  finished. — i  Kings  7 :  22. 

Among  the  most  striking  architectural  features  of 
Solomon's  Temple  were  two  grand,  stately  pillars, 
which  were  deemed  so  important  and  were  regarded 
with  such  pride  that  actually  a  name  was  given  to  each 
of  them.  And  attention  is  called  especially  to  the 
adornment  of  these  pillars.  The  men  who  designed 
and  executed  the  building  of  the  temple  aimed  at 
something  more  than  a  merely  commodious  building, 
wind-and-water-tight ;  they  would  make  their  handi- 
work strong  but  also  beautiful,  beautiful  as  they  could 
devise.  And  while  the  pillars,  the  rugged  blocks 
from  the  quarries  of  Lebanon,  unhewn  and  unadorned, 
would  have  borne  as  securely  the  massive  beams  of 
the  Temple,  these  men  wrought  not  only  from  need 
but  from  love,  and  patiently  carved  upon  the  stately 
columns  a  garland  of  lily-work.  This  is  what  I  wish 
to  speak  of  this  morning — the  pillar  and  the  lily- work, 
strength  and  beauty. 

What  is  beauty?  It  is  hard  to  answer  that  ques- 
tion except  by  saying  that  beauty  is  what  appeals  to 
our  sense  of  the  beautiful.  That  is  a  sense  we  all 
possess  in  greater  or  less  degree,  and,  from  the  dim- 
mest origins  of  humanity,  men  have  always  possessed 

99 


loo  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

it.  It  is,  moreover,  a  faculty  separate  and  distinct 
from  any  other.  You  can  no  more  explain  by  logic 
why  the  purple  shadow  on  a  mountain  is  beautiful, 
and  a  rubbish-heap  ugly,  than  you  can  explain  the 
taste  of  foods  by  a  theory  of  colours.  The  sense  of 
the  beautiful  is  one  of  the  ultimate  things  in  human 
psychology,  as  much  so  as  intelligence  or  conscience 
itself.  But  this  I  think  we  may  say,  that  we  are 
always  conscious  of  beauty  as  something  over  and 
above  bare  utility;  it  is  the  lily- work  graven  upon  the 
pillar.  I  do  not  in  the  least  mean  that  beautiful  and 
ornamental  are  convertible  terms.  Ornament  may  be 
only  added  ugliness,  and  always  is  so  when  it  is  used 
to  disguise  inferiority  of  material,  weakness  of  design, 
or  bad  workmanship.  But  it  is  a  characteristic  of 
all  that  is  beautiful,  or  is  thought  to  be  or  intended  to 
be  beautiful,  that  we  recognise  in  it  something  which 
is  not  called  forth  by  an  immediate  need,  which  goes 
beyond  what  is  strictly  necessary,  something  which 
endeavours  to  express  an  ideal  conception.  Always 
men  make  useful  things — steam-engines,  drain-pipes, 
dictionaries,  almanacs — because  they  need  them;  they 
make  beautiful  things — poems,  pictures,  symphonies — 
because  they  love  them.  Always  in  workmanship,  in 
nature  and  art,  in  things  material  and  things  spiritual, 
Beauty  is  the  offspring  of  Love. 

And  God  is  Love,  and  in  God's  Temple  every  pillar 
has  its  lily-work.  The  world  in  which  we  live  may 
be  regarded  as  a  temple,  which  has  been  built  up 
through  long  ages,  according  to  the  plan  of  God  and 
by  His  ever-active  hand.  And  as  we  examine  it,  we 
see  that  everywhere  strength  and  solidity  and  coherence 


STRENGTH  AND  BEAUTY  loi 

are  the  Builder's  first  care.  *'The  world  is  established 
that  it  cannot  be  moved."  *'He  hath  founded  it  upon 
the  seas,  and  established  it  upon  the  floods."  Every- 
where stability  and  order  are  the  Creator's  first  prin- 
ciples. God's  house  is  built  not  in  the  first  place  to 
look  well,  but  to  wear  well  and  to  stand  for  countless 
ages;  it  is  built  not  upon  the  sands  of  chance  and 
caprice,  but  on  the  rock  of  steadfast  purpose  and  un- 
changing law.  But  God  is  Love.  The  creative  im- 
pulse, the  root  of  all  creation,  is  Love;  and  therefore, 
everything  He  has  made  He  has  made  not  only  service- 
able but  more — beautiful.  This  great  framework  of 
creation  in  the  midst  of  which  God  has  set  us,  this 
fair  world  with  its  canopy  of  blue  and  its  tapestry  of 
green  proclaims  that  its  maker  is  no  mere  utilitarian, 
but  is  the  Divine  Artist  who  loves  the  works  of  His 
hands  and  is  never  content  that  they  should  come 
short  of  that  superabundant  and  ultimate  lustre  of 
perfection  which  is  beauty.  Think  how  much  more 
nature  lavishes  upon  us  than  is  absolutely  needful. 
We  might  have  had  nourishment,  meat  and  drink  to 
sustain  existence,  without  savour ;  light  to  do  our  work 
by  without  the  glow  and  charm  of  various  colour; 
sound  without  music;  there  might  have  been  a  popu- 
lated world  without  homes,  without  the  tender  and 
beautiful  ties  of  husband  and  wife,  parent  and  child; 
our  souls  might  have  been  endowed  with  reason  and 
conscience  only,  without  those  affections,  emotions, 
and  sensibilities  which  make  the  charm  and  beauty 
of  our  human  life.  We  might  have  had  the  pillars 
without  the  lily-work.  But  God  is  Love,  and  love 
fills  our  cup  to  overflowing.    What  a  world  of  beauty 


102  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

is  spread  out  around  us!  In  spite  of  the  abnormally 
backward  season  through  which  we  have  passed,  it 
seems  to  me  that  I  have  never  seen  nature  more  en- 
chantingly  beautiful.  The  tender  green  and  gold  of 
the  opening  leaves,  the  marvel  of  the  trees,  clad  in 
an  unexampled  richness  of  verdure,  and  the  wealth 
of  blossom  and  the  gaiety  of  the  wild  flowers  bedeck- 
ing meadow  and  wayside — how  they  satisfy  the  eye 
and  refresh  the  soul!  What  a  background  to  the 
devastations  of  war  is  the  beauty  of  Nature!  One 
of  my  boys  at  the  front  wrote  a  few  weeks  ago  that 
the  war  did  not  seem  so  utterly  horrible  during  the 
dead,  stark  barrenness  of  the  winter  months  as  now, 
when  it  is  turning  God's  world  into  an  inferno  among 
the  songs  and  blossoms  of  Spring.  Yet  there  is  another 
side  to  this.  It  is  refreshing,  and  comforting  too,  to 
look  on  God's  world  at  a  time  like  this.  No  human 
wickedness  can  obliterate  its  beauty  or  derange  the 
orderly  procession  of  its  seasons.  Still  the  sun  shines; 
the  streams  run  among  the  valleys;  the  trees  of  the 
Lord  are  full  of  sap;  the  grass  grows  for  the  cattle 
and  herb  for  the  service  of  man.  We  do  our  worst, 
but  it  is  a  comfort  to  think  how  little  after  all  we 
can  do  to  disturb  the  order  and  mar  the  fertility  and 
beauty  of  nature.     For, 

What  is  nature's  self 
But  an  endless 
Strife  towards  music, 
Euphony,  Rhyme? 

Trees  in  their  blooming, 
Tides  in  their  flowing, 
Stars  in  their  circling, 
Tremble  with  song. 


STRENGTH  AND  BEAUTY  103 

God  on  his  throne  is 
Eldest  of  poets; 
Unto  his  measures 
Moveth  the  whole. 

And  if  God  so  loves  the  beauty  of  things,  He  means 
that  we  should  love  it  too.  There  was  a  gate  called 
Beautiful  to  the  Temple  of  old;  and  there  is  a  gate 
Beautiful  to  the  Temple  of  every  man's  soul.  There 
is  endless  difference  in  the  things  we  admire,  and  in 
the  way  we  admire  them;  but  every  man  admires 
something.  By  that  gate  of  admiration  and  delight 
let  us  go  out  and  in,  and  worship  the  Lord. 

So  we  pass  into  the  temple  of  the  spiritual.  In 
this  temple  also  there  are  pillars,  and  upon  the  top 
of  the  pillars  lily-work.  Here  also  God  has  ordained 
first  strength  and  then  beauty.  The  Gospel  lays  the 
foundations  of  the  spiritual  life  deep  and  strong, 
upon  no  fluid  sentimentalism  but  on  the  bedrock  of 
eternal  facts.  Whatever  else  the  Christian  may  be, 
he  must  be  strong.  He  is  to  be  strong  in  faith,  clear 
and  decided  as  to  the  great  convictions  which  are  the 
basis  of  his  life.  He  is  to  be  strong  in  conscience.  No 
paltering  with  right  and  wrong,  but  firm  loyalty  to  the 
fundamental  duties  and  moral  obligations!  He  is  to 
be  strong  in  will,  "strengthened  with  all  might  in  the 
inner  man,"  resolute,  inflexible,  patient.  These  things 
are  the  underlying  granite.  These  things  must  be ;  and 
all  these  the  grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  able 
to  accomplish  in  us.  But  it  can  do  more.  On  the  top 
of  the  pillars  there  shall  be  lily-work.  In  the  spirit 
Christ  gives  us  there  is  strength ;  there  is  conscientious- 
ness, devotion  to  truth,  loyalty  to  principle;  but  there 


I04  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

is  more,  there  is  that  which  clothes  strength  with 
beauty. 

And  here  also  we  recognize  in  beauty  the  same 
characteristic  of  superabundance,  the  impression  not 
of  tax  and  measurement  but  of  a  giving  from  un- 
diminished and  inexhaustible  resources.  It  is  in  this 
way  we  distinguish  between  a  merely  right  action 
and  a  beautiful  action.  The  one  has  what  is  indis- 
pensable of  actual  integrity,  as  to  tell  the  truth  or 
pay  one's  just  debts — not  to  do  so  would  be  very 
wrong;  but  the  other  surprises  and  delights  by  some- 
thing over  and  above  of  magnanimity,  generosity  or 
self-sacrifice.  It  is  beautiful.  And  on  the  same  prin- 
ciple we  say  of  one  man  that  he  has  a  good  character; 
his  character  will  do,  it  will  serve  his  needs  and  carry 
him  through.  But  we  say  of  another  man  that  his  is 
a  beautiful  soul.  In  him  virtue  and  uprightness  are 
not  less  robust  and  reliable,  but  we  are  conscious  of 
something  more — a  wonderful  charm,  a  fragrance  as 
from  the  garden  of  the  Lord.  The  one  kind  of  char- 
acter commands  respect  and  invites  our  trust ;  the  other 
has  a  strangely  winsome  and  inspiring  power.  And 
again  the  source  and  element  of  this  beauty  is  love. 
Love  is  the  eternally  beautiful,  because  it  is  the  eter- 
nally inexhaustible,  and  it  beautifies  everything  into 
which  it  enters  and  with  which  it  blends. 

The  spontaneity  of  love  is  always  beautiful.  It  is 
no  despicable  thing  to  do  a  right  or  a  kind  action  when 
we  are  told  to  do  it,  or  have  it  suggested  to  us.  But 
to  need  to  be  told  takes  from  it  much  of  its  beauty. 
Our  Lord  called  it  a  beautiful  deed  when  Mary  anoint- 
ed Him  with  the  precious  ointment;  and  it  was  so 


STRENGTH  AND  BEAUTY  105 

beautiful  in  His  eyes  because,  for  one  thing,  it  was  so 
entirely  spontaneous.  No  one  dehianded  it  from  her, 
no  one  expected  it,  no  one  could  have  accused  her  of 
failing  in  a  manifest  duty  if  she  had  not  done  it. 
Only  her  own  deep,  reverent  love  taught  her,  a  simple 
maiden  dwelling  in  a  country  village,  to  perform  an 
act  of  queenly  munificence  and  of  exquisite  spiritual 
beauty.  And  it  is  this  beautiful  spontaneity  that  is 
so  much  to  be  desired  among  us.  In  the  Church  there 
are  always  persons  who  will  give  and  even  give  liber- 
ally, who  will  work  and  even  work  diligently,  but  who 
need  to  be  warmly  solicited,  or  artfully  coaxed,  or 
spurred  and  incited  by  the  example  of  others.  More 
of  the  spontaneity  of  love  would  grandly  transfigure 
our  Christian  giving  and  our  Christian  service,  would 
make  it  beautiful. 

Again  the  joy  of  love  in  service  and  sacrifice  is 
always  beautiful.  The  apostolic  writer  speaks  of  his 
readers  as  having  taken  joyfully  the  spoiling  of  their 
goods  for  Christ's  sake.  And,  again  let  it  be  said,  to 
make  sacrifices  of  any  kind  for  the  cause  of  Christ, 
for  righteousness'  sake,  is  no  small  thing.  It  is  no 
contemptible  achievement,  even  though  it  be  done 
without  joy,  with  dogged  resolution  and  a  stern  sense 
of  duty.  Yet  that  "joyfully"  contains  all  the  differ- 
ence between  what  is  indispensably  right  and  what  is 
spiritually  beautiful,  between  the  prose  and  the  poetry 
of  Christian  service.  The  sad  and  sober  martyrdom 
would  be  wonderful;  it  would  make  you  marvel  at  the 
sheer  strength  of  principle  which  could  constrain  men 
to  endure  such  things,  but  it  would  scarcely  incite 
to  imitation.    The  joyful  martyrdom  would  make  you 


io6  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

wonder  at  the  triumph  of  love  and  long  to  know  its 
secret  and  share  its  power.  It  is  the  artist's  delight 
in  his  work  that  makes  it  beautiful;  and  it  is  when 
something  of  Christ's  own  love  and  joy  enter  into 
our  service  and  sacrifice  that  they  begin  to  wear  the 
halo  of  beauty. 

And  most  beautiful  of  all  is  the  humility  of  love, 
its  unconsciousness  of  self.  *'Moses  wist  not  that  his 
face  shone" ;  and  Moses  was  the  only  man  in  the  camp 
of  Israel  who  did  not  know  it.  Ah !  if  he  had  dreamed 
that  his  face  shone,  or  had  desired  that  it  should  shine, 
no  veil  had  been  needed  to  mitigate  its  radiance.  The 
shadow  of  self  would  have  been  veil  enough.  Noth- 
ing is  so  fatal  to  the  beauty  and  attractive  power  of 
character  as  when  a  man  gives  the  impression  of 
being  self -complacently  aware  that  his  face  is  shining. 
Wherever  we  take  credit  to  ourselves  for  goodness, 
the  goodness  begins  to  wither  and  becomes  ugly.  If 
when  we  do  a  magnanimous  or  unselfish  action  we  are 
very  conscious  of  its  being  so,  all  the  meanness  and 
selfishness  which  we  have  expelled  by  the  front-door 
have  only  gone  round  the  house  and  entered  again  by 
the  back-door.  But  when  you  find  one,  like  the  Apostle 
Paul  for  example,  who  does  noble  things,  who  uncom- 
plainingly bears  heavy  burdens,  forgives  great  injuries, 
spends  and  is  spent  in  the  service  of  his  Master,  but 
who  never  appears  to  be  conscious  of  doing  anything 
heroic,  who  just  says,  'T  am  debtor;  I  am  doing  only 
what  any  honest  man  would  do  in  my  place,  trying 
to  pay  my  debts,  to  do  what  is  my  bare  and  obvious 
duty,"  in  such  lives  you  behold  the  beauty  of  the 
Lord. 


STRENGTH  AND  BEAUTY  107 

And  it  is  beyond  question  that  among  all  influences 
for  good  spiritual  beauty  is  the  most  potent.  It  is 
not  God's  greatness,  His  everlastingness,  His  omnipo- 
tence, His  omniscience,  it  is  the  Beauty  of  God  that 
still  draws  and  holds  the  soul  of  mankind.  The 
Beauty  of  God — that  is  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord.  He 
is  the  "outshining  of  the  Father's  glory,"  the  "image 
of  the  invisible  God,"  the  Beauty  of  God.  My 
brethren,  the  one  thing  from  everlasting  to  everlast- 
ing that  is  beyond  all  conception  both  strong  and 
beautiful,  strong  with  all  the  strength  and  beautiful 
with  all  the  beauty  of  God,  is  the  Love  of  Christ, 
that  pure,  spontaneous,  infinite,  eternal  devotion  of 
the  highest  to  the  lowest,  of  the  best  to  the  worst,  of 
Jesus  Christ  to  sinners,  to  you  and  me. 

How  he  stands  before  us  in  a  strength  and  majesty 
our  deepest  reverence  cannot  worship  as  it  ought,  in  a 
beauty  of  transparent  purity,  self-forgetting  humility 
and  self-sacrificing  love  our  clearest  insight  can- 
not receive!  I  have  spoken,  not  unprofitably,  I  hope, 
of  the  beauty  of  the  soul;  but  finally  let  me  say  this. 
Remember  that  with  our  own  beauty  we  have  nothing 
to  do.  To  make  ourselves  beautiful  is  not  in  the  least 
our  business.  We  cannot  do  it ;  and  the  more  we  try 
the  more  lamentably  w^e  shall  fail.  We  can  ape  the 
postures  and  attitudes  of  spiritual  beauty,  imitate  its 
accents  and  expressions,  but  only  to  make  them 
ridiculous  and  disgusting.  Beauty  cannot  be  put  on; 
it  must  be  put  out,  come  from  within,  as 


'In  the  spring  a  fuller  •crimson  comes  upon  the  robin's  breast, 
In  the  spring  a  livelier  iris  changes  on  the  burnished  dove." 


io8  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

No,  we  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  our  own 
beauty.  What  we  have  to  do  with  is  the  beauty  of 
Christ  and  of  all  men  and  women  in  whom  we  see 
the  beauty  of  Christ  reflected.  To  look  to  Christ, 
to  study  Christ,  to  follow  Christ,  to  put  on  Christ,  to 
wash  the  robes  of  character  in  His  blood,  to  live  the 
sacrificial  life  after  Him,  that  is  our  task.  Aim  at  this, 
that  you  may  have  more  true  godliness  in  your  soul, 
more  Christian  love,  more  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ 
dwelling  in  you,  and  you  shall  be  pillars  in  His  temple, 
and  upon  the  top  of  the  pillars  shall  be  lily-work. 

And  finally  the  thought  comes  that  though  beauty 
of  character  is  of  necessity  the  last  perfect  product 
and  manifestation  of  an  inward  grace,  the  outward 
discipline  of  life  has  no  small  part  in  evoking  and 
directing  the  soul's  growth  both  in  strength  and  in 
beauty.  The  pillar  and  its  embroidery  of  lily-work  is 
after  all  a  very  imperfect  emblem  of  a  complex  vital 
process.  Still  it  yields  the  suggestion  that  after  the 
pillar  has  been  set  up  in  the  temple  much  remains  to 
be  done.  The  pillar  might  be  set  up  in  a  day,  but  the 
chiselling  of  the  lily-work  was  a  slow  and,  if  a  pillar 
could  feel,  a  painful  process.  So  if  we  are  set  in 
God's  Temple,  for  His  service,  all  our  life  long  the 
Divine  Artist  will  be  carving  the  lily-work  upon  us, 
and  even  then  the  work  will  not  be  finished.  This  is 
what  is  going  on  all  the  world  over  in  God's  Temple. 
We  look  upon  the  scene  of  life  and  we  see  rude 
scaffoldings,  and  hear  the  clang  of  tools,  and  see  the 
chips  flying;  and  it  seems  to  our  untutored  eyes  as  if 
the  pillar  were  being  defaced  and  destroyed.  But  it 
is  the  Divine  Artist  at  His  work,  and  He  never  makes 


STRENGTH  AND  BEAUTY  109 

a  false  stroke,  strikes  neither  too  hard  nor  too  lightly 
for  the  material  He  works  upon  and  the  pattern  He 
desires  to  produce,  but  so  that  always  strength  may  be 
perfected  in  beauty.  That  work  is  going  on  with 
trebled  intensity  in  our  world  to-day.  Nay,  the  figure 
of  chiselling  the  pillar  is  too  weak  for  the  kind  of 
work  God  is  carrying  out.  It  is  with  fire  God  is  work- 
ing on  humanity,  cleansing,  remedial  fire,  fire  that  is 
burning  out  the  wood,  hay  and  stubble  we  have  built 
into  the  edifice  of  civilisation,  and  into  the  structure 
of  our  own  lives.  How  that  fire  is  searching  out  the 
weak  spots,  the  rubbish  and  the  rottenness!  How  it 
is  exposing  the  graft  and  corruption  in  our  own 
Canadian  politics,  showing  it  up  in  all  its  hideous- 
ness  and,  we  trust,  burning  it  out.  And,  horrible  as 
war  is,  how  it  is  shaping  life  into  new  strength  and 
beauty!  Nothing  could  be  more  wonderful,  more 
like  a  moral  miracle,  than  the  noble  way  in  which 
thousands  and  millions  of  our  young  men  have  thrown 
themselves  into  the  sacrificial  life  as  if  it  were  their 
native  element,  as  indeed  it  is.  I  have  spoken  of  the 
beauty  of  spontaneity,  of  joy  in  sacrifice,  of  self- 
forget fulness ;  and  it  is  an  inspiring  spectacle  to  see 
how  all  these  ideals  are  embodied  in  our  soldiers. 
Not  the  idlers  who  have  nothing  else  to  do,  but  the 
flower  of  our  young  manhood,  who  never  once  dreamt 
of  finding  their  vocation  in  war,  leave  their  colleges, 
their  professions,  their  businesses,  give  up  their  homes 
and  their  personal  prospects;  they  abandon  the  work 
and  the  enjoyments  of  an  ordered  life  to  take  their  part 
in  the  hardships  and  jeopardies  of  the  most  squalid 
and  disgusting  form  of  warfare  the  world  has  ever 


no  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

witnessed,  where  in  the  loathsome  mud  of  the  trenches 
and  among  the  foul  stench  of  poison-gases,  they  hazard 
and,  many  of  them,  lay  down  their  lives.  And  they 
do  it  spontaneously.  They  go  into  this  inferno  not 
from  the  love  of  war,  not  with  the  dream  of  glory, 
but  only  at  the  call  of  duty;  for  an  ultimate  good 
which  perhaps  they  cannot  clearly  define,  which  is 
too  large  for  any  of  us  clearly  to  define,  but  a  good 
in  which  they  know  their  country,  and  ultimately  the 
whole  world,  will  share.  And  they  do  all  this  so 
modestly,  with  a  heroism  which  is  so  sublimely  un- 
conscious of  itself.  "Do  not  write  to  us  in  the  trenches 
of  sacrifice,"  says  a  letter  from  the  front,  "it  is  not 
sacrifice  to  offer  our  lives  for  such  a  cause.  Life  so 
given  has  a  value  beyond  life."  My  friends,  you  and 
I  have  a  difficult  task  to  live  up  to  the  heroic  level  of 
these  men,  our  own  sons  and  brothers.  Let  us  try  at 
least  to  make  ourselves  more  worthy  of  such  sacri- 
fices. When  we  get  into  our  ordinary  life  and  into  the 
service  of  God's  Kingdom  day  by  day,  anything  like 
the  spirit  which  sustains  our  heroes  at  the  front,  we 
shall  soon  witness  the  making  of  a  new  world. 

I  have  never  urged  any  man  personally  to  go  into 
this  hell  of  war.  I  have  not  directly  done  any  re- 
cruiting. But  the  call  for  men  and  still  more  men 
becomes  more  insistent  day  by  day;  and  this  I  must 
and  will  say:  If  there  is  any  one  here  who  hears  in 
his  soul  the  whisper  of  a  voice  which  he  knows  to  be 
the  call  of  duty,  the  voice  of  his  own  noblest  manhood, 
let  him  listen  to  no  other  voice.  Let  no  influence 
deflect  you;  let  no  hand  hold  you  back.  If  you  do, 
I  shall  brand  you  with  no  epithet,  but  have  only  this 


STRENGTH  AND  BEAUTY  iii 

to  say,  that  you  will  have  lost  an  opportunity,  such  as 
seldom  comes  to  men  and  which  will  never  be  repeated, 
and  that  you  will  be  a  smaller  man — just  that,  a 
smaller  man — to  the  end  of  your  days.  But  if,  hearing 
the  voice,  you  listen  and  obey,  you  will  have  the  self- 
rewarding  consciousness  of  doing  your  duty,  of  being 
one  of  those  by  whose  sublime  self-sacrifice  the  world 
is  being  helped  forward  to  a  better  future,  by  whose 
deeds  a  page  of  history  is  being  written  that  will 
never  be  obliterated,  but  will  only  shine  more  brightly 
in  the  light  which  succeeding  ages  will  cast  upon  it. 

For  all  of  us,  the  question  of  Hfe,  life  in  its  strength 
and  beauty,  is,  now  as  always,  the  question  of  taking 
up  our  cross  to  follow  the  Christ.  May  we  all  answer 
that  question  aright! 


IX 

The  Pattern  of  the  Web 

And  when  Herod  would  have  brought  him  forth,  the  same 
night  Peter  was  sleeping  between  two  soldiers,  bound  with  two 
chains;  and  the  keepers  before  the  door  kept  the  prison. — 
Acts  12:  6. 

The  relation  of  Drama  to  actual  History  may  per- 
haps be  stated  thus — that  while  history  is  the  web 
that  is  woven  on  the  loom  of  time  and  circumstance, 
the  dramatist  essays  to  show  the  pattern  of  the  web. 
In  the  actual  course  of  events  the  interplay  of  human 
agency  with  the  physical  and  moral  forces  which  it 
alternately  sets  in  motion  and  is  set  in  motion  by  is 
so  complex,  and  involves  a  process  in  which  the  chain 
of  causes  and  effects  is  so  long  drawn-out  and  many 
of  the  links  are  so  subtle  and  secret,  that  to  unravel 
it  is  a  task  beyond  human  power ;  in  drama  this  process 
is  as  it  were  brought  to  a  focus  and  is  seen  in  a  con- 
centrated light.  But  history,  when  it  is  written  with 
the  insight  of  genius,  has  something  of  this  character- 
istic of  drama;  it  reveals  many  dramatic  situations. 
And  no  record  of  human  life  is  so  full  of  dramatic 
situations  as  the  Bible,  because  none  is  written  with 
such  insight  into  the  eternal  laws  which  govern  it ;  and 
not  even  in  the  Bible  itself  is  there  a  more  dramatic 
situation  than  that  which  is  set  before  us  with  the 
simplicity  of  perfect  art  in  this  chapter.    Let  us  study 

112 


THE  PATTERN  OF  THE  WEB         113 

it,  because,  though  events  seldom  shape  themselves 
in  just  this  dramatic  fashion,  we  have  here  the  real 
pattern  of  the  web. 

First  there  appears  the  sinister  figure  of  Herod. 
His  none  too  stable  throne  needed  the  prop  of  popu- 
larity; and  popularity  is  always  most  cheaply  pur- 
chased by  persecution  of  the  unpopular,  by  throwing 
a  victim  to  prejudice  and  hate.  And  so,  as  we  are 
told  with  tragic  brevity,  he  "killed  James,  the  brother 
of  John,  with  the  sword."  And  having  discovered  a 
method  of  ingratiating  himself  with  his  subjects  which 
cost  him  so  little,  and  since  to  repeat  the  act  was  in 
no  way  repugnant  to  his  disposition,  he  proceeded  to 
take  Peter  also.  When  the  story  opens,  the  meshes  of 
Herod's  net  are  drawn  very  closely  around  his  in- 
tended prey.  He  lies  on  the  floor  of  his  cell,  chained 
to  the  arm  of  a  soldier  on  either  side.  Outside  the 
bolted  door  may  be  heard  the  heavy  breathing  of  a 
third;  a  little  further  along  the  corridor  a  fourth 
sentinel  is  posted.  And  the  prisoner's  fatal  hour  is 
drawing  terribly  near.  It  is  the  last  night  of  Peter's 
captivity;  it  is  the  last  watch  of  the  night;  by  six 
o'clock  of  that  April  morning  he  is  to  be  led  forth  to 
execution,  to  be,  like  his  Master,  first  the  butt  and 
then  the  victim  of  the  Jewish  mob.  That  is  what 
Herod  is  meditating  on  his  bed  in  the  palace ;  that  is, 
so  to  say,  the  first  act  of  the  drama. 

But  in  another  quarter  of  Jerusalem  another  act 
is  simultaneously  going  forward.  The  prisoner  has 
friends,  faithful  and  also  influential,  who  are  aware 
of  the  imminent  peril  in  which  he  is  placed.  They 
are  begging  Peter's  life,  not  from  the  arrogant  tyrant. 


114  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

no,  but  from  Him  who  is  higher  than  the  highest ;  and 
they  have  been  employed  thus  all  night  long.  All  this 
is  going  on  at  the  same  moment  of  time.  Herod  is 
purposing  the  Apostle's  death;  has  arranged  it;  has 
given  the  order  and  set  the  machinery  in  motion  for 
its  accomplishment.  Peter's  friends  are  clinging  to 
the  skirts  of  omnipotence  on  his  behalf;  but  the  guards 
are  at  their  post,  the  prison-doors  are  fast,  and  the 
hour  is  hastening  on. 

And  what  is  he  doing  around  whom  all  this  plot 
is  thickening?  He  is  quietly  asleep.  Herod  cannot 
sleep  that  night.  He  is  rehearsing  on  his  bed  the 
words  in  which  he  will  harangue  the  populace  around 
the  scaffold  in  the  morning,  and  is  gloating  in  antici- 
pation over  the  plaudits  that  will  salute  his  ears.  And 
the  Apostle's  friends  cannot  sleep;  they  are  held  before 
God  in  an  agony  of  supplication.  But  the  man  whose 
life  is  in  the  balance  sleeps,  with  the  sleep  of  blissful 
ignorance,  of  conscious  innocence,  of  happy  tranquil- 
lity, sleeps  in  his  chains  the  sleep  that  "throws  Elysium 
o'er  the  soul's  repose."  As  he  sleeps,  perhaps  he 
dreams.  He  is  with  the  Master  again  on  the  bright 
Galilean  Lake,  or  in  the  busy  streets  of  Capernaum, 
or  in  the  desert  feeding  the  multitude;  or  again  he 
hears  the  cock  crow  and  meets  his  Lord's  reproachful 
gaze,  and  tears  again  moisten  his  cheek  from  beneath 
his  closed  eyelids ;  or  again  he  walks  beside  the  familiar 
shore  and  receives  the  Chief  Shepherd's  charge  to  feed 
the  flock,  both  the  lambs  and  the  sheep. 

But,  after  all,  might  not  one  regard  the  prisoner*s 
sleep,  tranquil  as  it  was,  as  only  a  pathetic  symbol  of 
human  ignorance  and  weakness?     '^Hapless  mortal," 


THE  PATTERN  OF  THE  WEB         115 

might  not  one  say?  "So  defenceless,  so  passive,  how 
thou  art  made  the  prey  of  circumstances!  They  are 
marching  down  upon  thee;  they  are  stalking  thee, 
as  the  hunter  his  quarry.  And  thou  dost  not  note 
their  approach ;  thou  dost  not  hear  their  stealthy  tread ; 
their  shadow  does  not  fall  upon  thy  vision.  Thy 
very  Hfe  is  hanging  on  a  hair — and  thou  sleepest!" 
Might  not  one  speak  thus?  Yes,  if  there  w^ere  not 
one  more  Person  in  the  drama.  He  w^ho  is  in  the  back- 
ground of  every  drama.  There  is  the  enemy  plotting, 
the  friends  praying;  and  the  man  himself  around  whom 
all  the  menace  and  the  intercession  are  gathering  has 
shut  his  eyes  and  quieted  himself  to  slumber.  Because 
there  too  is  He  who,  because  He  slumbereth  not  nor 
sleepeth,  giveth  His  beloved  sleep.  God  is  there  in  the 
palace;  there  in  the  house  of  prayer;  there  in  the 
prison,  keeping  all  the  threads  of  the  drama  in  his 
own  hands;  holding  the  tyrant's  power  in  derision, 
hearing  the  prayer  that  ascends  to  His  holy  habitation, 
responding  to  the  trust  of  His  child,  whom  He  is  lulling 
to  sleep  on  His  bosom.  And  now  it  is  His  time  to  work. 
The  final  act  is  ready  to  be  launched  upon  the  stage. 
The  moment  of  deliverance  is  appointed,  and  already 
its  messenger  and  instrument  is  on  the  w^ing  to  loose 
him  that  is  appointed  unto  death.  How  well  may 
Peter  sleep  when  God  is  watching  over  his  bed  and 
preparing  his  awaking !  How  w^ell  may  he  sleep,  be  it 
in  outw^ard  calm  or  storm,  among  friends  or  foes, 
who  sleeps  thus  on  the  pillow  of  trust  in  God,  whose 
resting-place  is  under  the  shadow  of  the  Almighty! 
Now,  we  have  here,  as  I  have  said,  a  clear-cut 
epitome  of  life;  we  have  the  real  pattern  of  the  web. 


1 16  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

There  is  one,  and  only  one,  supreme  question,  one,  and 
only  one,  debate,  which  has  run  through  the  whole 
history  of  man,  and  which  is  tugging  at  us  as  hard  as 
ever  to-day — is  there  a  God,  or  not?  In  the  world 
of  facts  which  confronts  us,  is  there  a  conscience 
corresponding  to  the  conscience  within  us?  Is  that 
world  of  facts  obedient  to  an  eternal  law  of  right, 
or,  at  the  bottom  of  things,  is  might  the  only  right 
there  is?  That  is  the  issue  which  is  so  dramatically 
set  before  us  in  this  narrative. 

Consider  what  a  man  like  Herod  stands  for.  He  is 
no  bigot  whose  soul  is  aflame  with  fierce  intolerance 
of  a  heretical  creed;  nor  is  he  a  fiend  in  human  form 
who  tortures  and  slays  in  the  mere  lust  of  cruelty. 
He  is  just  a  man  who  is  without  a  conscience,  and 
who  makes  a  world  after  his  own  likeness,  a  world  in 
which  right  and  wrong  are  entirely  negligible  quan- 
tities. To  him  his  fellow-men  are  simply  pawns  in 
the  game  he  plays.  If  their  lives  are  useful  to  him 
they  shall  live;  if  their  blood  will  cement  the  founda- 
tions of  his  throne  they  shall  die.  No  doubt  the  matter 
presented  itself  to  Herod's  mind  with  that  difference 
of  emphasis  which  transformed  murder  into  statecraft. 
The  "tyrant's  plea,"  necessity,  justified  the  atrocity. 
It  was  done  to  win  popularity,  but  the  popularity  of  a 
monarch,  the  popularity  which  is  the  breath  of  life  to 
a  ruler.  Yet  the  only  description  that  will  serve  for 
such  a  state  of  mind  is  that  word  of  the  Psalmist: 
"The  fool  hath  said  in  his  heart,  There  is  no  God." 
The  fool  so  described  is  not  the  man  who  holds 
atheism  as  a  theory,  but  he  for  whom  in  the  world  of 
practical  business   or  politics   God  simply  does  not 


THE  PATTERN  OF  THE  WEB         117 

count.  It  is  the  arrogant  man  like  Herod,  who  in 
his  dealings  with  his  fellowmen  recognises  no  authority 
but  his  own  will,  no  law  but  his  own  ambitions,  no 
restraint  but  his  own  interests.  These  form  the  boun- 
daries of  his  world,  from  living  within  which,  like  a 
spider  in  its  web,  he  has  lost  all  sense  of  the  greater 
world  surrounding  it.  He  has  no  apprehension  that 
there  is  that  in  the  very  nature  of  things  which  should 
make  him  say  "I  dare  not,"  that  which  is  not  flexible 
to  any  human  will,  which  no  man  can  usurp  to  his  own 
purposes,  which  will  not  be  bargained  with,  nor  set 
aside,  nor  ignored;  an  unalterable  and  inescapable 
power  which  holds  every  man  in  the  hollow  of  its 
hand,  which  must  be  to  every  man  strength  and  sal- 
vation or  ever-impending  danger  and  destruction — 
the  law  of  righteousness,  the  moral  order  of  a  universe 
created  and  governed  by  God. 

The  Bible  has  in  its  great  picture-gallery  many 
portraits  of  this  kind  of  fool.  But  take  an  example 
from  secular  history.  A  Greek  historian  tells  us  how, 
when  Athens  was  at  the  height  of  its  power,  it  adopted 
the  policy  of  incorporating  all  the  islands  of  the  ^gean 
in  its  empire.  One  small  island,  Melos,  still  retained 
its  independence.  The  Athenian  envoys  calmly  ex- 
plained to  the  islanders  that  it  was  necessary  to  their 
policy  that  Melos  should  submit.  They  did  not  pretend 
that  Melos  had  done  any  wrong  to  Athens,  or  that 
they  had  any  lawful  claim  to  the  island;  but,  speaking 
as  sensible  men  to  sensible  men  and  dealing  with  hard 
facts,  they  would  impress  upon  the  Melians  just  this, 
that  they  had  the  choice  of  two  alternatives,  to  submit 
or  to  be  destroyed.     The  Melians  answered  as  best 


ii8  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

they  could.  They  appealed  to  justice.  Was  it  quite 
safe  even  for  Athens  to  ride  roughshod  over  all  the 
laws  of  right?  We  take  the  risk  of  that,  said  the 
Athenians.  They  appealed  to  religion.  There  are 
gods,  and  they  will  help  the  innocent.  That  risk  also 
causes  us  no  uneasiness,  said  the  Athenians;  the  im- 
mediate question  was  whether  they  preferred  to  live 
or  die.  Then  we  choose  rather  to  fight  and  hope 
than  to  accept  slavery,  replied  the  brave  islanders. 
A  very  regrettable  misjudgment,  said  the  Athenians; 
and  the  war  proceeded  to  its  hideous  end.  They 
put  to  death  all  the  Melians  whom  they  found  of 
man's  estate,  says  Thucydides,  and  made  slaves  of 
the  women  and  children.  The  same  winter,  the 
Athenians  set  sail  with  a  greater  fleet  than  ever  before 
for  the  conquest  of  Sicily;  and  that  was  the  disastrous 
expedition  which  brought  Athens  to  her  doom.  Oh! 
it  is  all  so  old,  and  all  so  modern  too.  "We  will  take 
the  risk  of  that — in  these  questions  of  practical  busi- 
ness and  politics  religion  and  morality  do  not  count; 
at  any  rate,  the  risk  causes  us  no  uneasiness."  Don't 
you  hear  in  these  words  what  is  the  working  creed  of 
many  a  man's  life?  And  on  the  scale  of  world-history 
is  it  not  written  in  letters  of  fire  for  all  men  to  read 
to-day?  Put  for  Athens,  Germany,^  for  Melos,  Bel- 
gium, and  you  have  the  history  of  the  present  hour. 
To  the  list  of  all  the  arrogant  fools  who  have  said  in 
their  hearts  that  there  is  no  God,  the  Herods, 
Pharaohs,    Nebuchadnezzars,   another   has   added   his 


*My  attention  was  first  drawn  to  this  historical  parallel  by 
a  letter  in  the  Spectator. 


THE  PATTERN  OF  THE  WEB         119 

name.  The  axiom  upon  which  the  Kaiser  and  his  war- 
lords proceed,  that  in  the  universal  scheme  of  things 
nothing  is  necessary  but  the  success  of  their  arms,  that 
nothing  counts  in  comparison  with  Germany's  getting 
her  way,  and  that  Germany  to  get  her  way  is  entitled 
to  trample  the  moral  order  under  her  feet,  the  whole 
deliberate  conception  of  her  pohcy  of  "fright fulness" 
with  its  unblushing  contempt  for  all  considerations  of 
right  and  humanity,  its  cynical  readiness  to  take  the 
risk  of  contempt  for  God  and  the  trust  of  the  wronged 
in  God — this  is  the  very  arrogance  of  God-denial,  the 
supreme  impiety.  It  is  such  men  and  thoughts  and 
policies  that  make  one  say, 

There  may  be  Heaven,  there  must  be  Hell. 

It  is  of  such  that  it  is  written,  "He  shall  break  them 
in  pieces  like  a  potter's  vessel."  Their  ultimate  victory 
would  be  the  eclipse  of  the  eternal  righteousness  that 
rules  in  earth  and  heaven;  and,  as  Dr.  Denney  has 
lately  said,  in  words  we  all  indorse,  the  highest  calling 
of  faith  at  this  moment  in  the  world's  history,  the 
final  proof  we  can  give  that  we  are  believing  men,  is 
to  strike  with  all  our  might  in  the  Lord's  battle  on  the 
Lord's  side.  Yet  let  us  not  imagine  that  it  is  only 
potentates  like  Herod  and  the  Kaiser  who  can  be  guilty 
of  this  insolence  of  impiety — one  does  not  need  to 
stand  on  so  high  a  pedestal.  Everywhere  there  are 
men  who  in  their  dealing  with  men  and  with  women, 
on  the  basis  of  hard  facts  (as  they  would  say),  are 
at  any  time  willing  to  treat  God  and  his  righteousness 
as  a  cipher,  who  for  the  sake  of  gain  or  of  satisfying 
their  lust  or  climbing  the  ladder  of  their  ambitions  are 


126  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE    ^^ 

perfectly  ready  to  run  the  risk  of  all  that.  And, 
indeed,  what  is  all  presumptuous  sin  but  just  this?  It 
is,  as  St.  John  says,  lawlessness.  God  says,  "This  is 
the  eternally  right  thing  for  thee  to  do,  This  is  the 
way,  walk  thou  in  it."  Man  says.  Nevertheless  I  will 
do  as  I  please.  He  waves  God  aside  and  says,  I 
will  take  the  risk. 

Over  against  this  atheism  of  arrogant  self-will  we 
have  here  set  before  us  the  strength  of  faith  and  its 
quiet  rest  in  God.  The  two  are  set  in  strongest  con- 
trast; the  one  in  its  appearance  of  fearless,  all-conquer- 
ing might,  the  other  in  its  seeming  helplessness  and 
failure.  This  has  always  been  one  of  the  sore  prob- 
lems of  human  experience.  Peter  in  the  prison,  Herod 
on  the  throne — how  often  does  that  seem  to  be  the 
pattern  of  the  zveb.  Look,  one  shall  say,  and  you 
will  see  that  life  is  just  a  scrambling  lottery  in  which 
the  prizes  and  the  blanks  fall  you  know  not  how, 
except  that  the  most  greedy  and  unscrupulous  gener- 
ally succeed  in  seizing  the  biggest  share  of  the  good 
things.  Look,  another  shall  say,  and  you  will  see 
that  the  one  thing  that  counts  is  efficiency;  it  matters 
not  whether  a  man  be  godly  or  godless,  saint  or  devil, 
if  only  he  have  brain,  energy,  and  pluck,  he  will  enjoy 
the  same  success,  and  without  these  he  will  pay  the 
same  penalty  of  failure.  And  the  worst  of  it  is  that  so 
often  this  seems  to  be  so  true.  The  world  does  seem 
to  have  the  best  of  the  argument.  It  takes  the  risk, 
and  before  its  great  brazen  laugh  our  ideals  turn 
pallid,  and  our  hearts  are  ready  to  falter  as  we  seem 
compelled  to  admit  that  the  conscienceless  man  is 
right,  that  the  sphere  of  the  world's  successes  and 


THE  PATTERN  OF  THE  WEB         lai 

failures  is  one  in  which  God  and  his  righteousness 
are  a  negligible  factor.  It  has  always  been  so.  The 
Bible  is  full  of  it,  full  of  the  passionate  cry,  O  Lord, 
how  long?  how  long  shall  the  wicked  triumph,  and 
the  workers  of  iniquity  boast  themselves?  No,  God 
does  not  arrange  events  in  neat  packets  for  us  to  put 
in  the  scales  and  weigh  off  so  much  recompense  against 
so  much  right  or  wrong.  If  this  world  is  to  be  a  place 
in  which  the  just  are  to  live  by  their  faith,  a  place  of 
moral  discipline  and  education,  we  can  see  that  it 
could  not  be  so.  If  no  Herod  ever  had  more  power 
than  he  deserves,  or  if  the  angel  always  came  and 
delivered  Peter,  and  Herod  died  a  ghastly  death,  then, 
you  might  say,  all  men  would  believe.  Say,  rather, 
no  man  could  believe.  It  would  not  be  God  and  the 
right,  but  only  the  world  and  its  power,  splendour  and 
success,  to  which  we  would  own  allegiance. 

And  yet  we  know  that  here,  as  I  say  again,  we  have 
the  real  pattern  of  the  web.  We  know  by  the  deepest 
instinct  of  our  souls  that  Herod's  power  and  triumph 
are  a  lie  against  the  essential  nature  of  things.  We 
know  that  right  is  right  and  wrong  is  wrong,  and 
that,  whatever  happens,  it  is  not  only  better  but  im- 
measurably better  to  fight  and  suffer  for  the  right, 
that  the  man  who  does  that,  win  or  lose,  is  more  than 
conqueror,  that  nothing  here  or  hereafter,  in  this  or 
any  other  world,  can  alter  that.  But  we  know  too  that 
the  world  is  built  on  that  plan.  Even  had  Peter  not 
been  saved  from  Herod's  clutches,  that  would  not 
have  essentially  altered  the  case.  Herod,  and  the  Jews 
he  sought  to  please,  and  the  whole  system  of  things 
he  stood  for,  were  soon  to  fall  crashing  into  the  abyss 


122  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

of  judgment.  The  apostles,  though  they  fell,  fell 
as  the  advance-guard  of  Christ's  conquering  army. 
Look  deeply  and  widely  enough,  and  you  will  see  that 
while  evil  may  last  a  long  time  and  godlessness  have 
a  successful  course  for  many  a  year,  at  last  doom 
overtakes  it,  and  though  it  flourish  like  the  green  bay- 
tree,  it  withers  from  the  root.  At  last  there  appears 
on  the  wall  of  every  corrupt  institution,  every  un- 
righteous policy,  every  dishonest  man's  business,  every 
ungodly  man's  life,  that  mysterious  handwriting  which 
to  those  who  can  read  it  is  the  prophecy  of  open 
disaster  and  defeat.  And  God's  soldiers,  what  of 
them  ?  They  fight,  they  suffer,  they  die  for  the  Eternal 
Cause;  what  is  their  reward?  To  contribute  to  its 
ultimate  triumph,  but  also  to  share  that  triumph.  If 
we  are  sure  of  God  and  the  Right,  we  are  sure  of 
Eternity  too.  There  is  no  other  way  in  which  we  can  be 
sure  of  Eternity  than  by  first  venturing  ourselves  for 
God  and  the  Right.  This  world  does  not  show,  it 
never  will  show,  it  is  not  intended  to  show,  the  com- 
plete pattern  of  the  web.  The  moral  order  needs 
another  world  than  this.  The  curtain  does  not  fall 
at  death ;  the  last  act  of  the  drama  is  still  to  be  unfolded 
in  the  hereafter. 

The  great  question  in  a  man's  life  is,  what  things 
he  is  sure  of,  and  what  things  he  is  prepared  to  take 
the  risk  of.  Herod  on  the  one  hand,  the  sleeping 
prisoner  and  his  praying  friends  on  the  other  hand, 
illustrate  the  two  opposite  answers  men  give  on  that 
question.  Herod  is  sure  of  his  rank  and  dignity  and 
kingly  authority,  of  his  soldiers,  guards  and  prison- 
houses,  sure  of  his  power  to  do  with  men  like  Peter 


THE  PATTERN  OF  THE  WEB         123 

as  he  chooses  for  his  own  ends;  and  as  for  God  and 
righteousness  and  eternity,  the  risk  causes  him  no 
uneasiness — He  does  not  even  think  of  it.  And  there 
are  men  always  whose  certainties  are  of  the  same 
kind.  Give  them  money-power,  brain-power,  health- 
power,  and  they  feel  that  they  grasp  tangible  realities. 
There  they  plant  their  feet  on  solid  ground,  and,  as 
for  the  rest — well,  they  are  not  concerned.  On  the 
other  hand,  that  handful  of  men  and  women  praying 
all  the  night  through,  what  are  their  certainties  ?  And 
Simon  Peter  asleep  on  the  dungeon-floor  while  men  are 
erecting  the  scaffold  on  which  he  is  to  die — what  is 
it  that  makes  that  a  spectacle  not  of  humiliating  weak- 
ness but  of  triumphant  peace?  Just  this,  that  sure 
of  nothing  else,  they  are  sure  of  God  and  the  right, 
sure  of  eternity,  and  for  the  other  things  they  are 
willing,  shall  I  say,  to  take  the  risk?  Nay,  for  them 
when  all  seems  most  imperilled,  all  is  most  assured. 
Come  life,  come  death,  all  things  are  theirs.  I  put 
it  to  you  that  theirs,  not  Herod's,  are  the  real  cer- 
tainties. I  put  it  to  you  that  the  first  certainty  given 
to  every  man,  the  possession  of  which  raises  him 
from  being  the  mere  creature  of  circumstances  and 
makes  him  man,  is  that  right  is  right,  always  right; 
and  the  next,  that  God  is  God,  whose  will  of  truth  and 
right  is  supreme  over  and  throughout  all  things;  and 
then  that,  sure  of  the  moral  order  established  and 
maintained  by  God,  we  may  be,  and  must  be,  sure  of 
eternity,  the  harvest  of  earth's  sowings. 

These  are  the  great  spiritual  issues  forced  upon  us 
by  the  war;  and  these  are  the  great  certainties  upon 
which  we  rest,  and  through  faith  in  which  we  must 


124  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

triumph.  We  did  not  go  into  this  war  because  we 
were  sure  of  victory,  but  because  we  were  sure  of 
the  right,  and  of  that  all  that  has  happened  since  has 
only  made  us  surer.  And  sure  of  the  right,  we  are 
sure  of  God.  Let  us  be  sure  of  God.  Let  every 
difficulty,  every  reverse,  every  sacrifice  required,  only 
make  us  surer  of  God,  compel  our  faith  to  send  its 
roots  deeper  into  the  faithfulness  of  God.  Such  faith 
and  patience  we  need  to  win  the  long  campaign;  and 
such  faith  and  patience,  not  in  word,  but  in  deed.  It 
is  not  talkers  but  soldiers  the  hour  demands.  What 
God  is  calling  for  now  is  not  men  who  will  argue  well 
about  the  faith,  but  men  who  will  fight  the  good  fight 
of  faith,  men  who,  like  that  dear  and  gallant  lad  for 
whom  we  mourn  to-day  (though  well  we  know  that 
such  death  as  his  is  nothing  else  than  victory  over 
death),  will  take  their  life  in  their  hands  and  venture 
all  for  God.  Happy  is  every  one  who  builds  his  life  on 
those  certainties — Right,  God,  Eternity — who  builds 
it  on  Jesus  Christ.  That  life  alone  is  worthy  of  a  man, 
and  is  sure,  safe,  and  blessed,  hidden  with  Christ 
in  God,  amid  things  present  and  things  to  come. 


The  Court  of  Appeal 

But  with  me  it  is  a  very  small  thing  that  I  should  be  judged 
of  you,  or  of  man's  judgment:  yea,  I  judge  not  mine  own  self. 
For  I  know  nothing  against  myself;  yet  am  I  not  hereby  justi- 
fied :  but  he  that  judgeth  me  is  the  Lord.— I  Cor.  4:  3,  4-    (R-  V.) 

The  practical  problem  which  St.  Paul  here  deals 
with  in  so  trenchant  a  manner  is  one  which  not  only 
meets  apostles  and  such  like  public  personages,  but 
which  intimately  concerns  us  all.  Every  one  is  a  public 
personage  on  some  scale.  There  is  no  one  so  insig- 
nificant but  he  is  the  centre  of  a  world,  though  it  be  a 
tiny  world,  of  interest  and  observation  and  comment. 
Each  of  us  stands  before  a  certain  tribunal  of  public 
opinion,  where  his  character  is  discussed,  his  conduct 
criticised,  and  his  motives  interpreted.  And  it  is  never 
a  question  of  small  importance,  sometimes  it  becomes 
one  of  the  first  importance,  what  our  attitude  ought  to 
be  towards  those  verdicts  of  human  opinion  and  social 
judgment. 

There  are  two  attitudes  which  are  both  wrong,  and 
equally  wrong:  entire  indifference  and  servile  depend- 
ence. Here,  indeed,  the  Apostle  seems  to  proclaim 
himself  serenely  indifferent  to  what  people  said  or 
thought  of  him  at  Corinth;  seems  to  wave  their  irre- 
sponsible criticisms  aside  with  some  contempt.  "Say 
on;  to  me  it  is  of  no  vast  consequence  what  you  say: 

I2S 


126  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

don't  imagine  that  I  take  the  cackle  of  your  bourg 
for  the  thunder  of  the  world."  But  he  protests  too 
much.  No  one  can  fail  to  read  between  the  lines 
that  this  was  far  from  being  his  real  feeling.  St.  Paul 
was  the  most  sensitive  and  sympathetic  and  affectionate 
of  men;  his  heart  welled  over  with  love  and  some- 
times with  the  wrath  of  love.  And  just  as  a  soft- 
fleshed  mollusc  grows  a  protective  shell  around  its 
tender  body,  so  here  he  unconsciously  seeks  to  conceal 
under  the  very  brusqueness  of  his  words,  yet  does 
not  succeed  in  concealing,  how  deeply  he  felt  the  dis- 
loyalty of  some  who  owed  him  so  much,  and  how 
sorely  he  was  hurt  by  it.  He  was  nobly  independent 
of  the  praise  or  blame  of  men,  but  that  independence 
was  not  indifference. 

Indifference  is  never  right.  It  is  not  wholesome 
for  any  one  to  be  always  snapping  his  fingers  in  the 
face  of  public  opinion,  setting  at  naught  its  conven- 
tions and  standards  and  defying  its  criticisms.  It 
makes  a  man  hard  and  brutal.  He  takes  it  for  strength 
of  character,  but  in  fact  it  is  only  weakness  trying  to 
look  like  strength.  An  aggressive  and  truculent  inde- 
pendence is  only  a  kind  of  inverted  servility,  paying 
unconscious  and  unwilling  homage  to  what  it  defies. 

Further,  no  man  can  afford  to  be  indifferent  to 
what  his  fellowmen  think  of  him:  such  indifference 
has  a  way  of  getting  itself  surely  avenged.  How  much 
our  lives  are  influenced  for  better  or  worse  by  the 
opinions  which  others  form  of  us,  and  the  feelings 
they  entertain  toward  us,  none  of  us,  I  suppose, 
ever  fully  knows.  People  do  not  tell  us  all  they 
think  of  us — that  is  a  privilege  reserved  for  our  very 


THE  COURT  OF  APPEAL  127 

nearest  and  dearest— they  do  not  speak;  no,  but  they 
act.  By  some  inconsiderateness  in  your  conduct,  by 
just  yielding  to  the  mood  you  are  in  and,  as  you  would 
perhaps  put  it,  being  your  spontaneous  self,  you  give 
needless  offence  to  some  one;  and  though  nothing  is 
said,  an  impression  is  formed,  and  that  impression 
is  readily  conveyed  from  one  mind  to  another.  How 
much  of  kindness  and  good-will,  of  furtherance  and 
happiness,  we  may  have  lost  through  indifference  to 
the  feelings  and  opinions  of  others,  or  gained  by  the 
opposite,  we  cannot  tell  and  can  scarcely  surmise. 
There  is  no  more  powerful  and  terrible  tribunal  on 
earth  than  that  at  which  we  daily  stand  to  receive 
the  judgment  of  our  fellows,  and  none  whose  verdicts 
are  more  effective.  No  man  is  so  great  or  so  small 
that  he  can  afford  to  ignore  them. 

You  may  say,  perhaps,  that  this  is  low  ground  to 
take.  Well,  then,  from  a  higher  point  of  view  I  say 
that  such  indifference  is  not  wise  or  safe.  There  is  in 
us  all  a  natural  desire  to  stand  well  with  our  fellow- 
men,  to  see  the  light  of  kindly  appreciation  in  the  eyes 
of  those  about  us.  Without  this  feeling  social  life 
and  intercourse  could  not  exist  at  all;  and  if  God  has 
implanted  it  within  us,  it  is  for  a  wise  and  necessary 
purpose.  It  is  a  safeguard,  a  powerful  and  pungent 
check  on  our  doing  anything  base  or  dishonourable  in 
the  eyes  of  those  whose  good  opinion  we  value.  Very 
helpful  is  it  sometimes  in  the  hour  of  temptation  just 
to  think  how  we  should  appear  to  others,  what  sorrow 
and  shame  it  would  bring  to  those  whom  we  love  and 
revere,  were  we  to  yield  to  the  ignoble  thing  that  is 
tugging  at  our  hearts.    Who  will  not  acknowledge  that 


128  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

he  has  often  been  strongly  influenced  for  his  good 
by  the  fact  that  he  stands  before  this  tribunal  of  social 
judgment?  And  when  any  man,  young  or  old,  sets 
this  at  defiance  he  ought  to  make  very  sure  that  he  is 
following  the  clear  light  of  conscience  and  not  the 
lure  of  his  own  vanity  or  obstinacy;  that  he  is  not 
mistaking  the  one  for  the  other. 

And  lastly,  I  say  that  indifference  to  the  opinion  of 
others   is  not   Christian.     One   of   our   old    Scottish 
families  has  as  its  motto  these  words:  "They  say. 
What  say  they?    Let  them  say."    Now  that  is  a  piece 
of     sheer     paganism.       Christianity     develops     and 
strengthens  the  individuality  which  sets  a  man  apart 
from  others,  but  not  at  the  expense  of  the  sympathies 
which  bind  us  to  each  other.     Christianity  is  to  love 
your  neighbour  as  yourself;  and  it  is  impossible  that 
you  should  thus  love  your  neighbour  and  be  at  the 
same  time  entirely  regardless  of  what  he  chooses  to 
think  of  you.     To  feel  this  about  any  human  being 
would  mean,  if  it  were  true,  that  every  spiritual  tie 
between  you  had  been  severed,  that  you  and  he  were  no 
more  to  each  other  than  one  rock  to  another  rock — an 
absolutely  unchristian  state  of  things.  If  it  were  true,  I 
say,  because  it  scarcely  ever  is  true.    Usually  it  is  mere 
affectation  and  bravado  for  a  man  to  profess  himself 
careless  of  what  the  world  thinks  of  him.     The  only 
person  who  actually  does  not  care  is  he  who  has  become 
completely    anti-social,    the    hardened    and    hopeless 
criminal.     And  there  is  one  supreme  example  which 
proves  that  this  way  to  moral  independence — the  way 
of  indifference — is  not  open  to  us,  the  example,  be 
it  reverently  said,  of  God  Himself.     He  who  is  the 


THE  COURT  OF  APPEAL  129 

Moral  Supreme,  the  Eternal  I  AM,  who  is  above 
angels'  praise,  who  is  Judge  of  all — is  He  indifferent 
to  what  even  we  poor  mortals  think  of  Him?  Nay, 
here  is  the  marvel  of  His  love  that  He  cares  for  this 
supremely,  ever  seeking  to  reveal  Himself  to  us,  to 
dispel  our  erroneous  and  injurious  thoughts  of  Him, 
sending  His  Christ  into  the  world  to  suffer  and  die 
for  us  that  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  His  glory 
may  shine  in  our  hearts,  that  we  may  trust  and  love 
Him,  knowing  Him  as  He  is.  So  must  it  be  with  our- 
selves in  our  petty  degree.  It  is  only  as  our  fellowmen 
know  and  trust  and  love  us  that  we  can  be  of  most 
and  best  service  to  them;  and  we  cannot,  if  we  have 
anything  of  God  in  us,  be  indifferent  to  this. 

All  that  is  true  and  exceedingly  important ;  and  yet, 
even  while  I  have  been  speaking,  the  thought  has 
perhaps  been  running  through  your  minds  that  most 
of  the  greatest  deeds,  those  that  have  wrought  most 
lasting  good  in  the  world,  have  been  done  by  men 
who  had  to  fight  the  world,  have  been  done  in  defiance 
of  dominant  opinion,  in  the  face  of  misconception  and 
disapproval,  and  even  of  disgrace  and  scorn;  and  that, 
on  the  other  hand,  many  of  the  worst  deeds  and  basest 
betrayals  of  right  have  been  due  not  to  the  innate 
criminality  of  those  who  did  them,  but  to  their  weakly 
yielding  to  the  pressure  of  external  opinion.  One 
thinks  at  once  of  Herod's  murder  of  the  Baptist, 
Pilate's  abandonment  of  Christ  to  the  cross,  Peter's 
denial  of  his  Lord.  Far  more  than  the  falsehood  of 
indifference,  most  of  us  are  in  danger  from  the  opposite 
falsehood  of  servile  dependence.  Nothing  weakens 
manhood  more  than  this.    There  is  scarcely  anything 


I30  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

more  contemptible  than  the  bondage  which  some 
people  willingly  endure  through  their  terror  of  social 
judgments.  To  live  in  constant  dread  of  what  A,  B, 
and  C  will  think  of  you  and  your  doings  is  really  to 
reduce  existence  to  its  lowest  terms.  It  is  an  evil  that 
runs  through  human  life  in  many  forms  and  grades. 
The  moral  parasite  who  has  no  conceptions  of  right 
and  wrong  except  those  he  borrows;  the  lad  whose 
sole  ideal  is  what  his  set  counts  manly;  the  man  who 
with  no  convictions  of  his  own  is  always  listening 
anxiously  to  hear  what  the  crowd  is  cheering  for,  or 
who  is  just  the  echo  of  his  favourite  newspaper,  or 
of  the  last  book  read,  or  of  the  circle  he  is  at  present 
mingling  with;  he  who  if  he  hears  a  flippant  note  of 
sceptical  smartness,  an  idle  laugh  at  what  he  calls  his 
creed,  is  thrown  off  his  unstable  standing-ground  and 
is  floundering  in  doubt  and  disloyalty — how  many  such 
persons  there  are,  like  a  jelly-fish  drifting  with  wind 
and  wave,  wounded  and  torn  by  every  obstacle  it 
touches  as  it  drifts.  What  valour,  what  honesty,  what 
strength  can  there  be  in  such  a  life?  What  but  a 
sense,  if  it  were  felt,  of  meanness  and  cowardice  and 
humiliation?  And  this  is  a  temptation  which  closely 
besets  us  all,  which  is  inseparable  from  human  nature 
and  human  life,  and  by  which  we  are  apt  to  be  subtly 
influenced,  more  than  we  are  perhaps  aware  of. 

We  ask,  then,  What  is  the  true  path  for  our  feet 
between  these  falsehoods  of  careless  or  contemptuous 
indifference  and  servile  dependence?  St.  Paul  treads 
it  here  and  leaves  his  footprints  for  us  to  follow. 
Human  opinion  is  one  of  the  tribunals  before  which 
we  stand,  and  it  has  its  legitimate  place  and  power; 


THE  COURT  OF  APPEAL  131 

but  it  is  the  lowest,  and  from  its  verdicts  there  is  always 
the  appeal  to  the  higher  court  of  conscience  within  and 
of  God  above.  So  the  Apostle  tells  the  Corinthians 
that  their  praise  or  blame  is  to  him  a  very  secondary 
matter.  He  takes  the  case  before  that  court  within 
the  breast,  where  a  man  is  himself  both  judge  and  jury 
and  the  prisoner  on  his  trial,  and  there  conscience  bears 
him  out.  *'I  am  conscious  of  nothing  against  myself.'' 
The  greatest  of  modern  philosophers  used  to  say 
that  two  things  above  all  others  filled  him  with  wonder 
and  awe:  one,  the  vision  of  the  starry  heavens,  with 
their  revelation  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  material 
universe;  the  other,  and  yet  more,  the  human  Con- 
science, the  revelation  of  the  moral  universe  in  every 
human  heart.  Let  us  also  think  with  wonder  and  awe 
of  Conscience,  of  the  amazing  and  mysterious  authority 
which  it  wields.  Every  one  knows  it;  no  man  ques- 
tions it;  no  man  can.  There  is  the  statesman  in  his 
cabinet,  his  brow  furrowed  with  anxious  thought  as 
he  weighs  with  utmost  care  the  consequences  of  this 
and  that  line  of  policy;  but  should  conscience  speak 
and  say,  this  is  right  and  that  is  wrong,  he  knows — - 
whatever  he  may  do  with  the  knowledge,  he  knows — 
that  the  matter  is  not  really  open  to  debate ;  the  author- 
itative voice  has  said,  "This  is  the  way,  walk  ye  in  it." 
Or  there  is  the  man  of  business  in  his  office,  his  brain 
hard  at  work  on  questions  of  profit  and  loss,  schemes 
by  which  great  gains  seem  attainable  or  great  losses 
avoidable;  he  also,  when  conscience  speaks,  knows, 
however  he  may  choose  to  act,  that  a  hand  has  touched 
him  with  whose  imperative  no  other  can  compare.  There 
is  lying  within  a  man's  reach  the  intoxicating  cup  of 


132  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

pleasure,  and  the  sea  of  desire  within  him  heaves  and 
surges;  but  above  the  tumult  that  "still  small  voice" 
speaks  and,  whether  submitting  to  it  or  not,  he  knows 
that  it  speaks  with  conclusive  authority.  Conscience  is 
not  always  infallible,  and  yet  its  right  to  command  is 
unquestioned  and  unquestionable.  It  is  by  no  means 
infallible;  it  makes  grave  mistakes.  As  the  years  go 
on  our  conscience  comes  to  view  some  things  differ- 
ently— it  says  little  for  our  moral  progress,  if  it  does 
not — yet  its  deliverances  at  the  moment  are  those  which 
we  must  accept.  Another  man  may  have  a  much  better 
conscience  than  I;  mine  may  be  crude,  ill-informed, 
puerile  compared  with  his.  But  my  conscience  is  my 
conscience;  and  I  must  not  take  the  time  of  day  from 
another  man's  clock.  Let  him  be  one  the  latchet 
of  whose  shoe  I  am  not  worthy  to  unloose,  I  must  not 
let  him  come  between  me  and  that  inward  monitor 
which  is  the  voice  of  God  to  my  own  soul. 

Here,  then,  amid  the  welter  of  the  world's  con- 
troversies and .  criticisms  and  irresponsible  gossip,  all 
the  influences  that  would  sway  us  this  way  and  that,  is 
something  fixed  and  firm — Conscience.  Without  dis- 
dain for  other  men,  obey  Conscience.  Without  losing 
anything  of  sympathy  and  respect  for  those  who  differ 
from  you,  without  bitterness  against  those  who  un- 
justly reproach  you,  obey  Conscience.  Young  people, 
scarcely  anything  can  be  of  greater  moment  for  the 
right  management  of  your  life  than  that  you  should 
learn  early  to  use  your  own  conscience.  Do  not  let 
it  be  subordinated  or  lost  in  that  of  your  set.  Dare  to 
stand  morally  upon  your  own  feet,  to  look  at  the  rights 
and  wrongs  of  things  with  your  own  eyes.     Ask  of 


THE  COURT  OF  APPEAL  133 

Him  who  is  the  true  Master  and  Guide,  What  wilt 
thou  have  me  to  do?  And  when  He  has  pointed  the 
way,  let  your  "eyes  look  right  onward."  Then  He 
shall  "keep  you  secretly  in  a  pavilion  from  the  strife 
of  tongues,"  and  amid  all  the  clatter  and  bustle  of  the 
world  He  will  make  a  great  peace  in  your  soul.  Yes, 
when  a  man  has  the  testimony  of  a  good  conscience  he 
has  wherein  to  rejoice.  He  has  a  strong  fortress.  He 
gets  him  up  into  a  high  mountain  from  which  he  can 
see  the  heavens  above  and  the  earth  beneath.  The 
mists  of  human  mis  judgment  may  envelop  it  for  a 
time ;  but  they  are  a  passing  thing ;  when  they  pass  the 
mountain-top  will  stand  out  serene  and  clear  under  the 
sunshine  of  heaven. 

But  we  need  another  word  to  make  this  consciousness 
of  integrity  humble  and  wholesome  as  well  as  strong. 
And  St.  Paul  gives  us  that  word:  "I  know  nothing 
against  myself,  yet  am  I  not  thereby  cleared.  He  that 
judgeth  me  is  the  Lord."  For  the  judgment  of  the 
Corinthians  he  cares  little  in  comparison  with  that  of 
his  own  conscience;  but  there  is  that  other  supreme 
tribunal  before  which  he  must  stand  at  last,  before 
which  he  is  standing  now,  and  at  the  thought  of  which 
he  bows  his  head  in  humility  and  solemn  awe.  He 
that  judgeth  me  is  the  Lord;  and  far,  far  above  the 
superficial  estimates  of  men,  and  beyond  my  own  esti- 
mate of  myself,  rises  the  ultimate  verdict  of  that  Judge. 
A  company  of  men,  of  whom  Daniel  Webster,  the  great 
American  orator,  was  one,  were  once  discussing  the 
question.  What  was  the  greatest  thought  that  had  ever 
passed  through  their  minds?  When  it  came  to  Web- 
ster's turn  to  speak,  he  paused  a  little  and  then  said, 


134  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

"The  greatest  thought  that  has  ever  occupied  my  mind 
is  that  of  my  personal  responsibihty  to  my  Maker," 
and  after  another  brief  pause  he  rose  and  silently  with- 
drew to  his  room.  Do  we  ever  think  of  it?  Have  we 
endeavoured  in  any  way  to  realise  our  personal  respon- 
sibility to  God?     How  it  dwarfs  everything  else! 

And  yet  you  may  ask,  What  difference  is  there 
between  following  the  behests  of  conscience  and  the 
sense  of  responsibility  to  God?  After  all,  can  we  get, 
can  we  ever  get,  beyond  Conscience?  We  cannot. 
Conscience  is,  and  must  always  be,  the  medium  through 
which  is  transmitted  to  us  the  moral  imperative  of  God. 
If  we  ask  ourselves.  Am  I  doing  right  in  the  sight  of 
God  ?  the  answer  can  come  authoritatively  only  through 
Conscience.  We  cannot  anticipate  or  in  any  way 
represent  to  ourselves  what  God's  judgment  of  us  is 
or  will  be,  except  through  Conscience;  nor,  indeed, 
can  God  ever  pronounce  any  judgment  upon  us  that 
will  be  to  us  a  moral  judgment  except  through  Con- 
science. We  cannot  follow  Christ  except  by  obeying 
Conscience.  And  yet,  as  every  one  feels,  there  is  a 
vital  difference  between  being  a  conscientious  man  and 
being  a  Christian.  A  vital  difference  in  many  ways, 
of  course,  but  in  this  way  in  particular.  Conscience 
is  the  eye  of  the  soul;  and  as  it  is  through  the  eye  that 
every  kind  of  light  comes  to  us,  bright  or  dim,  light 
that  leads  astray  or  light  that  guides  truly,  so  is  it 
with  Conscience.  And  the  Christian  is  one  whose  eyes 
look  to  Christ  and  through  whose  conscience  the  light 
of  Christ  flows  in.  Or,  to  put  it  in  another  way,  the 
question  is,  what  we  make  Conscience  of.  Every  one 
who  uses  his  conscience  must  have  a  standard  by  which 


THE  COURT  OF  APPEAL  135 

he  measures  his  character  and  conduct.  And  the  Chris- 
tian is  one  whose  conscience  acknowledges  its  standard 
in  Christ.  He  makes  conscience  of  obeying  Christ, 
following  Christ,  pleasing  Christ.  The  question  he 
asks  his  conscience  is.  What  would  He  have  me  to  do, 
and  have  I  done  it?  But  more,  the  Christian's  con- 
science is  not  only  thus  enlightened;  it  ought  to  be, 
as  with  St.  Paul,  constantly  enlivened  and  strength- 
ened by  the  sense  that  life  is  lived  under  that  Master's 
eye  who  will  at  last  pronounce  His  verdict  upon  it.  St. 
Paul  here  likens  himself  to  a  steward,  of  whom  what 
is  required  is  that  he  be  found  faithful.  And  however 
honest  a  steward  may  be,  faithfulness  in  his  manage- 
ment of  the  estate  and  accuracy  in  his  bookkeeping  will 
be  not  a  little  stimulated  by  keeping  before  him  the 
fact  of  the  Master's  final  audit.  There  never  was  a 
greater  enthusiast  for  Christ  than  St.  Paul,  and  there 
never  was  a  greater  enthusiast  for  Conscience ;  because 
Christ  filled  his  conscience.  Christ,  you  might  say,  was 
his  conscience.  His  conscience  was  his  to  interpret 
Christ's  commands,  to  discern  every  beckoning  or  warn- 
ing gesture  of  his  hand. 

And  all  this  leads  up  to  two  great  questions,  with 
which  I  close.  The  first  is.  What  is  it  to  be  a  Chris- 
tian? Is  it  to  hand  over  the  load  of  conscience  to 
Christ,  to  lay  us  low  at  His  feet  as  helpless  sinners; 
saying,  ^'Nothing  in  my  hands  I  bring;  Simply  to  thy 
cross  I  cling"  ?  It  is  that  first  of  all  and  always.  **Con- 
science  does  not  know  of  itself  the  way  of  peace;  it 
wanders  restless  till  it  catches  sight  of  Calvary,  when 
its  eye  kindles  like  that  of  the  exile  who  sees  on  the 
horizon  the  cliffs  of  his  native  land;  and  when  it 


136  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

reaches  the  Cross  it  pitches  its  tent  there  for  ever." 
But  because  first  of  all  and  always  Christianity  is  that, 
it  is  more.  It  is,  in  a  single  word,  loyalty  to  Christ, 
it  is  to  make  it  our  life-work  to  do  His  will,  to  satisfy 
Him,  to  set  that  before  us  as  our  aim  and  within  us  as 
our  motive.  The  second  question  is  the  personal  one — 
Are  we  Christians  ?  And  of  what  sort  ?  That  question 
let  each  answer  to  his  own  conscience,  in  the  sight  of 
God.  I  say  but  this:  Blessed  are  they  who  when 
accused  by  Conscience  do  not  disregard  the  warning, 
but  bring  their  burden  to  the  merciful  Saviour.  And 
blessed  are  they  who,  trusting  in  Him  and  looking  to 
His  approval,  exercise  themselves  to  have  always  a  con- 
science void  of  offence,  who  direct  their  footsteps 
not  by  the  opinions  and  criticisms  of  men  but  by  the 
voice  of  the  Master  speaking  within  them.  They  shall 
have  their  battle  to  fight,  their  crosses  to  bear ;  but  they 
shall  have  "songs  in  the  night,"  and  shall  go  from 
strength  unto  strength,  until  they  appear  before  their 
Lord,  and  hearing  his  "Well  done"  shall  not  sorrow 
any  more  at  all. 


XI 

Providence  in  the  Fall  of  a  Sparrow 

Are  not  two  sparrows  sold  for  a  farthing?  And  one  of 
them  shall  not  fall  to  the  ground  without  your  Father.  But  the 
very  hairs  of  your  head  are  all  numbered.  Fear  ye  not,  there- 
fore, ye  are  of  more  value  than  many  sparrows. — Matt.  lo:  29-31. 

There  is  scarcely  any  truth  more  precious  to  religious 
faith  than  that  of  Divine  Providence.  It  lays  hold 
of  us  at  every  crisis  of  our  personal  history;  it  touches 
us  every  day  and  every  hour;  it  includes  in  its  scope 
our  whole  career  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave  and  to 
what  lies  beyond  it.  It  is  indispensable  to  the  religious 
interpretation  of  life. 

First,  let  me  briefly  state  what  this  doctrine  is.  It 
is  that  God,  who  made  the  world,  governs  it  by  the 
laws  He  has  ordained ;  and  not  only  so,  but  governs  it 
for  spiritual  ends,  for  the  advancement  of  His  kingdom 
and  the  spiritual  benefit  of  mankind.  It  means  that  the 
natural  order  is  adapted  to  our  spiritual  necessities; 
that,  as  directed  and  used  by  God,  physical  events  have 
a  spiritual  purpose  and  message.  Gravitation  is  not 
a  spiritual  force,  but  a  fall  due  to  its  action  may  be 
designed  to  have  an  important  place  in  a  man's  spiritual 
history.  The  wealth  or  poverty  due  to  the  economic 
law  of  supply  and  demand  may  be  a  means  of  rich 
moral  culture  to  a  human  soul.  And,  further,  the 
Christian  belief  in  Providence  is  not  merely  that  God's 

137 


138  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

government  of  the  world  is  directed  in  a  general  way 
to  this  highest  end,  but  that  it  has  particular  regard 
to  every  one  of  the  millions  of  men,  to  all  their  actions 
and  every  happening  of  their  lives. 

Everywhere  the  Bible  teaches  or  presupposes  that 
there  is  such  a  Providence;  that  nothing  can  come 
into  our  lives,  whether  by  the  laws  of  nature,  by  our 
own  act,  or  the  act  of  our  fellowman,  but  it  comes  with 
a  Divine  intention  and  message.  But  nowhere  is  this 
taught  so  unreservedly  and  enthusiastically  as  by  our 
Lord  himself.  He  boldly  extends  its  sphere  even  to 
the  lower  creatures.  He  bids  us  look  at  the  sparrows. 
Who  would  be  interested  in  the  biography  of  a  spar- 
row? Who  would  burden  himself  with  superintending 
the  life  of  a  sparrow?  What  value  does  the  market 
set  upon  sparrows?  Two  are  sold  for  one  farthing, 
says  one  evangelist;  five  for  two  farthings,  says  an- 
other. These  poor  little  sparrows  are  so  cheap  that 
if  you  take  two  farthings'  worth  you  get  one  into  the 
bargain.  But  they  are  God's  sparrows  for  all  that. 
The  Infinite  God,  just  because  he  is  the  Infinite  God, 
cares  for  the  sparrows.  He  tells  the  number  of  the 
stars;  He  takes  note  of  all  the  birds  that  fly,  and  not 
one  of  them  falls  to  the  ground,  by  fowler's  snare  or 
winter's  cold  "without  your  Father."  "Fear  ye  not, 
therefore,"  Jesus  says  with  gentle,  smiling  irony,  "ye 
are  of  more  value  than  many  sparrows.  The  hairs  of 
your  head  are  all  numbered." 

I.  Now  this  great  truth  is  like  all  the  other  great 
truths  of  religion  in  this — it  at  first  staggers  one.  As 
soon  as  we  think  a  little  about  it,  it  seems  incredible, 
inconceivable;  we  are  tempted  to  turn  from  it  as  an 


THE  FALL  OF  A  SPARROW  139 

impossible  fancy.  And  then,  as  we  think  more  deeply, 
the  idea  that  at  first  staggered  us  becomes  a  certainty. 
At  first,  it  seems  impossible  that  it  can  be  true;  then 
we  come  to  see  that  nothing  else  can  be  true.  And 
here  our  Lord  states  it  in  the  boldest,  most  uncom- 
promising fashion,  "Not  a  sparrow  falleth  to  the 
ground  without  your  Father.  The  hairs  of  your  head 
are  all  numbered."  It  seems  tmthinkable  that  an 
infinite  Being  should  choose  to  care  for  such  trifles; 
should  exercise  a  providence  over  motes  and  atoms, 
sparrows  and  hairs.  It  is  this  thought  which  finds 
utterance  in  a  clever  writer  of  the  present  day,  who, 
in  speaking  of  prayer,  pours  ridicule  upon  those  good 
people  who  think  to  detain  the  ear  of  the  Almighty 
with  their  petty  complainings  and  wearisome  petitions, 
as  if  ''He  were  some  idler  at  a  club"  and  had  not  the 
affairs  of  the  universe  to  manage.  But  think  a  little 
more  deeply.  Is  this  a  worthy  idea  of  the  greatness 
of  God?  Is  this  a  tribute  to  His  infinitude?  On  the 
contrary  it  is  to  belittle  God.  It  is  to  reduce  him 
almost  to  human  stature.  We  should  be  astonished  to 
hear  of  the  head  of  a  great  firm  spending  days  and 
nights  in  hunting  up  an  error  of  a  few  cents  in  the 
balance-sheet;  or  of  the  Minister  of  Finance  devoting 
himself  to  mailing  the  income-tax  schedules,  or  of  a 
commander-in-chief  at  the  crisis  of  a  great  campaign 
occupying  himself  in  drilling  a  squad  of  recruits.  But 
this  is  a  sign  of  man's  littleness,  not  his  greatness.  It 
is  because  human  capacity  is  limited,  that  men  who 
have  great  affairs  and  momentous  responsibilities  laid 
upon  them  are  excused  from  the  burden  of  petty  detail. 
It  is  only  imperfection  that  makes  such  concentration 


I40  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

necessary.  But  when  we  speak  of  God  we  speak  of 
capacity  that  has  no  limit.  God  would  not  be  really 
God  if  while  He  rules  the  armies  of  heaven,  He  did 
not  think  of  me;  if  while  He  kindles  a  star,  He  did 
not  show  the  same  perfection  of  thought  for  the 
tiny  wayside  flower;  if  while  He  governs  the  nations 
of  mankind.  His  attention  were  distracted  from  the 
sparrow  in  its  nest.  It  is  the  very  glory  of  God,  it 
is  the  prerogative  of  the  Infinite,  that  he  cares  for 
these  things  that  seem  to  us  trifles. 

But  in  the  real  truth  of  things,  what  is  a  trifle? 
Little  things  are  great,  often  greater  in  their  conse- 
quences than  those  of  larger  bulk.  A  little  wheel,  if  it 
fall  out  of  gear,  will  disable  a  vast  and  intricate 
mechanism.  A  little  seed  may  alter  the  botany  and 
agriculture  of  a  continent.  A  dislodged  stone  in  your 
path  may  seem  a  thing  too  trivial  for  notice;  yet 
that  stone  may  cause  a  fall,  and  the  fall  a  fractured 
limb,  and  I  have  known  the  whole  course  of  a  man's 
life  altered  by  a  fracture  so  caused. 

Say  not  "a  small   event  I"     Why  "small"? 
Q)sts  it  more  pain  that  this,  ye  call 
A  "great  event/*  should  come  to  pass, 
Than  that?     Untwine  me  from  the  mass 
Of  deeds  which  make  up  life,  one  deed 
Power  shall  fall  short  in  or  exceed! 

It  is  only  little  minds  that  can  slight  little  things  as 
trifles.  "Trifles  educate  us;  trifles  wake  our  temper; 
trifles  colour  our  views  of  truth;  influence  our  thought; 
trifles  combined  form  the  warp  and  woof  of  life." 
There  are  no  trifles  with  God ;  there  can  be  none.  He 
rules  heaven  and  earth,  but  He  thinks  of  you  and  yours, 


THE  FALL  OF  A  SPARROW  141 

of  everything  relating  to  your  soul,  your  body,  your 
business  affairs,  your  domestic  concerns,  those  small 
perplexities,  those  little  interests,  those  transient  secular 
cares  which  weigh  your  spirit  down.  His  finger  is 
upon  the  pulse  of  your  life  every  moment.  "Not  a 
sparrow  falleth  to  the  ground  without  your  Father. 
Fear  not,  ye  are  of  more  value  than  many  sparrows." 

IL  But  there  is  another  consideration  which,  when 
we  think  of  it,  seems  to  make  the  complete  providence 
of  God  inconceivable.  The  world,  we  know,  is  gov- 
erned by  certain  fixed  and  unchangeable  laws,  and 
these  often  act  in  a  way  that  seems  cruel  and  meaning- 
less. Men  are  caught  in  the  great  wheels  of  Nature's 
machinery  and  are  crushed  by  them  like  insects;  they 
roll  on  relentlessly,  like  a  great  Juggernaut  car,  over 
our  hopes  and  fears,  entreaties  and  agonies.  Often- 
times the  government  of  the  world  looks  like  the  work 
of  an  iron  necessity  much  more  than  of  paternal  love 
and  care. 

We  can  see,  indeed,  that  this  fixedness  in  the  order 
of  Nature  is  itself  the  most  stupendous  and  beneficent 
work  of  Divine  Providence.  It  is  better  that  every 
one  who  touches  fire  should  be  burned  than  that 
fire  should  sometimes  be  hot,  sometimes  cold.  A  rock 
falling  upon  a  passer-by  kills  him,  yet  this  is  a  vastly 
lesser  evil  than  that  gravitation  should  be  uncertain 
in  its  action.  It  is  this  certainty  in  things — that  the 
sun  will  set  to-night  and  rise  again  to-morrow,  that 
fire  will  burn  and  cold  freeze,  that  bread  will  nourish 
life  and  poisons  destroy  it,  that  what  we  sow  we  shall 
reap — it  is  this  that  makes  the  world  habitable.  The 
same  laws  by  which  catastrophes  occur,  which,  tres- 


142  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

passed  by  human  ignorance  or  carelessness,  selfishness 
or  greed,  produce  disease,  poverty,  degradation,  death 
— are  those  which,  rightly  used,  produce  health  and 
wealth  and  fill  human  life  with  blessing.  ''The  same 
laws,"  as  Martineau  says,  "which  are  death-dealing 
for  an  hour  are  life-giving  forever!" 

So  much  we  can  see,  and  can  calmly  reason  out. 
It  is  when  we  come  to  the  concrete  and  personal  appli- 
cation of  this  truth,  to  its  bearing  upon  individual 
lives,  that  our  faith  is  shaken  and  we  are  enveloped 
in  mystery.  And  all  that  is  brought  home  to  us  to- 
day by  the  paralysing  event  which  has  touched  us  so 
nearly,  and  has  overclouded  these  bright  summer  days 
with  a  sense  of  tragedy  we  can  scarcely  realize.  At 
one  fell  blow  struck  out  of  darkness,  a  thousand  men 
and  women,  undreaming  of  danger,  full  of  the  inter- 
ests, the  joy  and  the  business  of  life,  close  their  eyes 
upon  this  earthly  scene  forever.  A  thousand  souls, 
prepared  or  unprepared,  are  launched  into  eternity — 
the  ardent  Salvationist,  bent  upon  his  Master's  busi- 
ness, and  the  worldly  trifler  are  taken  in  the  same  net. 
Hearts  are  broken,  homes  desolated,  hopes  are  blasted, 
careers  apparently  rich  in  unfulfilled  purpose  are  cut 
short;  and  all  this,  because  of  what?  All  for  what? 
What  does  this  terrible  thing  mean?  What  is  God's 
meaning  in  it?  Brethren,  we  may  interpret  it  in 
various  ways.  We  may  regard  it  as  a  further  instal- 
ment of  the  always  heavy  price  man  has  to  pay  for  the 
experience  that  leads  to  improvement  in  his  methods, 
as  a  call  to  more  stringent  precautions  in  the  use  of 
Nature's  powers.  We  may  feel  it  as  a  rebuke  to  the 
proud  self-reliance  of  the  modern  spirit.     We  have 


THE  FALL  OF  A  SPARROW  143 

spoken  too  proudly  of  man^s  conquest  of  Nature;  and 
once  more  we  see  how  feeble  a  reed  man  is  in  the  midst 
of  creation.  We  may  feel  it,  and  we  must  feel  it,  as 
a  call  to  profound  and  practical  sympathy,  to  such 
measures  of  material  help  as  are  within  our  power, 
and  to  the  lifting  up  of  our  hearts  unto  God  in  prayer 
that  there  may  be  succour  for  the  needy,  comfort 
for  the  bereaved  and  desolate,  and  that  out  of  the 
horror  of  such  a  calamity  greater  good  may  yet  in 
many  ways  spring  up. 

Yet  all  this  does  not  satisfy  either  heart  or  mind. 
We  are  forced  back  to  the  deeper  question — what 
does  such  an  event  as  this  mean?  What  is  the  religi- 
ous interpretation  of  it?  Has  it  any  such  interpre- 
tation? Is  Providence  at  work  here  at  all?  Shortly 
after  the  sinking  of  the  Titanic,  eighteen  months  ago, 
I  met  on  the  street  a  well-known  citizen  with  whom  I 
am  on  very  friendly  terms,  and  we  naturally  fell  into 
talk  about  the  recent  disaster.  "I  don't  believe,"  said 
he,  "that  the  Lord  had  much,  if  anything,  to  do  with 
it.  The  criminal  rashness  of  man,  together  with  the 
forces  of  nature,  is  responsible  for  the  whole  calamity." 
"Quite  so,"  I  replied.  "Nevertheless,  if  you  had  been 
on  board,  or  if  you  had  had  a  wife  or  child  on  board, 
I  think  you  would  have  wished  to  feel  that  the  Lord 
had  everything  to  do  with  it."  *T  believe  you're  right," 
he  said  in  a  suddenly  altered  tone.  For  myself,  I 
confess  this  is  nothing  less  than  a  religious  necessity. 
If  I  cannot  believe  that  God  has  a  guiding  and 
controlling  hand  in  everything  that  befalls  me  and 
my  fellows;  if  any  force  of  nature,  or  action  of  man, 
can  take  away  my  life,  hurt  me,  impoverish  me,  alter 


144  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

my  lot  in  any  way,  without  God,  then  there  is  no  God 
in  whom  I  can  absolutely  trust.  There  might  be  a 
God  of  a  sort,  a  God  who  might,  sometimes,  be  in  the 
position  of  having  to  apologize  to  men.  "My  child, 
I  am  sorry  this  has  befallen  you,  but  it  could  not  be 
averted.  You  have  my  profound  sympathy,  but  the 
machinery  which  has  bruised  and  mangled  you  could 
not  be  stopped."  There  would  be  no  God  who  is  really 
God,  of  whom  I  can  say  "He  is  my  refuge  and  my 
fortress,"  to  whom  I  can  trustfully  say,  whatever 
befalls,  "Thy  will  be  done."  For  myself,  I  must  believe 
in  the  God  Jesus  believed  in,  the  Father  without  whom 
not  a  sparrow  falleth  to  the  ground.  Only  this  is 
satisfying  to  the  religious  instincts  of  my  nature. 

Now,  when  we  look  at  the  lives  of  men  individually 
we  do  not  find  it  so  hard  to  conceive  that  all  their 
experiences  and  events  are  ordered  according  to  a  wise 
and  loving  purpose.  There  is  always  a  great  deal 
we  cannot  understand ;  yet  we  find  it  possible  to  believe, 
and  feel  sure,  that  just  that  path  through  life  which  is 
mapped  out  for  each  of  us,  with  its  rough  places  and 
its  smooth,  is  the  best  adapted  to  help  us  forward  to 
the  attainment  of  our  best  possibilities.  We  can  believe 
that  our  times  are  in  God's  hands,  and  that  when  a 
man  suffers  the  stroke  of  mortality,  it  is  at  the  right 
time  and  in  the  right  way.  But  when  a  thousand  lives 
are  cut  down  by  a  single  blow,  crushed  together  in 
a  fate  apparently  so  fortuitous  and  undiscerning,  can 
we  believe  that  for  each  of  these  Providence  has 
wrought  out  an  all-wise  design — for  those  who  were 
taken,  for  those  who  are  left,  for  all  those  hearts  and 
homes  that   are  darkened  with   grief,    for  all  those 


THE  FALL  OF  A  SPARROW  145 

others  that  are  filled  with  the  grateful  joy  of  deliver- 
ance? It  is  staggering.  It  looks  so  indiscriminate,  so 
much  like  the  outcome  of  some  dreadful  lottery.  It 
must  be  a  sore  trial  to  the  faith  of  many  bereaved 
hearts,  and  it  is  a  trial  to  our  faith,  too, — no  slight 
trial,  I  confess,  to  my  own  faith,  as  I  think  of  it. 

And  yet,  brethren,  when  we  do  think  of  it,  we  feel 
assured  that  even  this  is  possible  with  God.  What  has 
happened  on  the  Empress  of  Ireland^  is  simply  a  con- 
densed and  crowded  section,  so  to  say,  of  what  takes 
place  in  human  life  every  day.  The  number  of  human 
lives  cut  short  there  is  but  an  insignificant  fraction 
of  the  number  of  human  beings  who  die  somewhere 
every  day;  and  why  should  it  be  supposed  that  the 
dark  archer  drew  his  bow  at  a  venture  there  rather 
than  upon  those  who  every  hour  breathe  their  last, 
each  on  his  own  deathbed?  Could  we  bring  together 
into  one  mass  all  the  havoc,  terror,  agony  and  grief 
which  every  day  are  sustained  by  men  throughout 
the  world,  there  would  be  before  us  a  sum,  enough  to 
repeat  many  times  over  the  disaster  of  the  stricken 
ship.  And  why  should  we  suppose  that  affliction  has 
been  indiscriminately  meted  out  there  rather  than  else- 
where? Let  us  fully  acknowledge  the  mystery  which 
envelops  such  an  event.  Life  in  many  things,  in  most 
things,  is  invested  with  mystery;  let  us  learn  to  quiet 
our  hearts  before  its  mysteries.  There  must  be  mys- 
tery. Life,  if  it  were  not  mysterious,  if  we  could  see 
all  around  it  and  comprehend  it  through  and  through, 


*This  sermon  was  preached  on  the  Sunday  following  the  loss 
of  that  vessel. 


146  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

would  be  a  very  little  thing.  It  is  not  strange  that 
God's  Providence  should  be  mysterious  to  us.  It  can- 
not be  otherwise.  This  infinitely  complex  interweav- 
ing of  Divine  purpose  which  makes  human  Hfe  what 
it  is — we  cannot  conceive  it,  cannot  picture  it  in  our 
imagination.  But  I  have  seen  a  great  loom  in  opera- 
tion, on  which  lace-work  of  most  complicated  design 
was  being  woven,  with  infallible  and,  as  it  seemed 
to  me,  superhuman  dexterity;  and  though  the  process 
was  explained  to  me  I  could  not  in  the  least  grasp  it. 
It  remained  an  utter  mystery  how  each  of  those  sepa- 
rate threads  should  find  its  proper  place  in  that  intricate 
pattern;  and  yet  it  was  being  done  before  my  eyes. 
Well,  this  world  and  all  its  history,  all  the  forces  of 
nature,  all  the  busy  thoughts  and  schemes  of  men — 
are  God's  great  loom  on  which  he  is  weaving  the  com- 
plex web  of  human  life.  We  cannot  follow  the  process ; 
we  cannot  conceive  how  it  is  accomplished ;  we  cannot 
reason  it  out  in  a  theorem  and  compel  all  men's  assent 
and  reverence  and  trust.  But  it  is  a  truth  that  con- 
firms itself  in  experience.  The  more  we  trust  it,  the 
truer  we  find  it.  No  one  ever  trusted  it  so  utterly  as 
Jesus  Christ.  No  one  ever  felt  the  burden  and  mystery 
of  this  world  as  He  did.  He  suffered,  the  just  for  the 
unjust,  died  the  Elect  Victim  of  human  blindness,  in- 
justice and  malignity.  And  he  saw  in  it  all,  what? 
His  Father's  Hand  and  Will.  His  faith  was  unshaken, 
unhesitating,  exultant.  "Not  a  sparrow  falleth  to  the 
ground  without  your  Father.  The  hairs  of  your  head 
are  all  numbered." 

III.     And  so  the  great  message  to  us  to-day  is  once 
more  our  need — first  and  last,  our  need  of  the  Living 


THE  FALL  OF  A  SPARROW  147 

God.  We  are  made  to  feel  how  little  we  know  of  the 
world  we  live  in — what  dangers  may  lurk  in  the  hap- 
piest conditions,  how  helplessly  ignorant  we  are  of 
what  a  day  may  bring  forth.  How  easily  possible  it 
had  been  for  you  or  me,  or  for  those  dear  to  us,  to 
have  been  in  the  place  of  these  who  went  down  in  the 
dark,  engulfing  waters!  How  we  are  walking  always 
on  the  verge  of  unseen  good  or  ill !  And  what  is  our 
compensation?  This — that  we  may  be  sure  of  God. 
We  know  not  what  shall  be  on  the  morrow,  but  we 
know  Him  who  is  the  same  yesterday  and  to-day  and 
forever.  We  are  made  to  feel  what  a  wilderness  of 
perils  this  world  is  to  our  weakness  and  ignorance, 
that  we  may  take  shelter  under  the  wings  of  the 
Almighty,  and  fly  to  the  impregnable  refuge  of  His  love 
and  power.  That  is  the  great  and  blessed  message 
Christ's  Gospel  bids  us  read  in  all  the  hazards  and 
uncertainties  of  life.  It  sets  before  us  the  Eternal  God, 
Ruler  of  Heaven  and  Earth,  our  Father,  our  Saviour, 
our  Sanctuary;  and  to  this  sanctuary  it  bids  us  come 
by  the  door  of  penitence  and  childlike  trust,  humbling 
our  self-confidence,  turning  from  sin  and  self-will,  put- 
ting our  wills  in  line  with  His  will,  living  for  His  ends. 
Then  nothing  in  this  world  or  any  other  can  separate 
us  from  His  love  or  can  pluck  us  out  of  the  mighty 
hand  of  His  protecting  care.  Brethren,  trust  in  your 
Father's  Providence,  His  almighty  and  loving  rule  over 
you  and  yours  and  all  men,  and  all  that  concerneth 
you  and  them.  Let  it  fill  your  lives  with  sacred  mean- 
ing, and  with  the  peace  that  passeth  understanding. 
There  is  no  salvation  but  in  God.  Safety  and  peace 
are  in  the  path  of  obedience.     Where  God  calls,  no 


148  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

real  peril,  no  horrible  pitfall,  can  be.  The  Lord  is 
my  Shepherd — I  shall  not  want.  The  Lord  is  my 
Shepherd — though  I  walk  through  the  valley  of  the 
shadow  of  death,  I  will  fear  no  evil.  The  Lord  is  my 
Shepherd — goodness  and  mercy  shall  follow  me  all 
the  days  of  my  life,  and  I  shall  dwell  in  the  house  of 
the  Lord  forever. 


XII 

A  Tragedy  of  Blunder 

And  Jephthah  vowed  a  vow  unto  the  Lord,  and  said, 
If  thou  shalt  without  fail  deliver  the  children  of  Ammon  into 
mine  hands,  then  it  shall  be  that  whatsoever  cometh  forth  of  the 
doors  of  my  house  to  meet  me,  when  I  return  in  peace  from 
the  children  of  Ammon,  shall  surely  be  the  Lord's,  and  I  will 
offer  it  up  for  a  burnt-offering. — Judges  ii:  30,  31. 

Tragedy  is  of  various  kinds.  Thfsre  is  the  tragedy 
of  sin;  nothing  is  so  tragic  as  sin.  But  the  element 
of  tragedy  in  Jephthah' s  Hfe  did  not  spring  from  that 
source.  He  is  not  one  of  the  Bible's  great  sinners, 
but  one  of  its  rudest  and  most  untutored  saints. 
There  is  the  tragedy  of  circumstance.  The  dark,  dread 
mysteries  of  life,  the  sins  of  the  fathers  visited  upon 
the  children,  the  innocent  involved  in  the  doom  of 
the  guilty,  the  happenings  of  time  and  chance  to  all, 
the  vain  struggle  of  men  against  a  fate  which  draws 
its  meshes  around  them  like  fishes  taken  in  an  evil 
net — such  are  the  themes  which  have  inspired  the  great 
tragedians  both  of  ancient  and  modern  times,  from 
^schylus  to  Ibsen  and  Hardy.  But  neither  is  this 
the  conception  which  dominates  the  story  of  Jephthah 
and  his  tragic  vow — the  Bible  does  not  recognize  cir- 
cumstance as  the  ruling  power  in  human  lives.  There 
is  another  kind  of  tragedy,  the  tragedy  of  blunder. 
It  is  always  a  tragical  thing  to  see  men  meaning  well 

149 


I50  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

and  doing  ill,  striving  blindly  in  a  mist  of  error,  mak- 
ing costly  sacrifices  for  false  ideals  or  needless  sacri- 
fices for  true  ideals,  making  themselves  or  others 
martyrs  by  mistake.  It  is  under  this  description  that 
the  story  of  Jephthah  comes.  We  may  learn  noble 
things  from  Jephthah.  A  splendour  of  soul  shines 
through  all  his  mistakes  and  turns  the  tragedy  into  a 
triumph.  Immeasurably  better  is  it  to  be  a  martyr 
even  by  mistake  than  to  be  the  wise  worldling  who 
worms  his  way  through  life  with  no  thought  but  of 
saving  his  own  skin,  and  keeps  his  life,  as  Christ  tells 
us,  only  to  lose  it.  There  are  men  whose  faults  are 
nobler  than  other  men's  virtues;  and  of  such  was 
Jephthah,  the  son  of  Gilead.  Yet  if  he  is  a  hero,  he 
is  the  hero  of  a  tragedy,  a  tragedy  of  blunder. 

His  early  history  reveals  him  as  a  strong  and  reso- 
lute personality,  overcoming  in  the  power  of  native 
manhood  grievous  disadvantages  of  fortune  and  ill- 
usage  by  men.  Coming  into  the  world  under  the 
cloud  of  illegitimacy,  spurned  by  his  insolent  brothers, 
buffeted  about  by  all  men,  at  his  father's  death  left 
portionless  and  homeless,  Jephthah  shakes  the  dust  of 
Gilead  from  his  feet,  and  betaking  himself  to  the  land 
of  Tob,  just  across  the  border,  establishes  himself  as 
a  Hebrew  Robin  Hood  among  the  mountains.  But, 
outlaw  though  he  was,  his  character  as  well  as  his 
valour  must  have  gained  for  him  no  less  admiration 
than  notoriety;  for  when  the  king  of  Ammon  inso- 
lently demands  a  large  slice  of  Hebrew  territory  and 
threatens  war,  what  can  the  elders  of  Gilead  do,  at 
their  wits'  end  for  terror,  but  appeal  to  the  patriotism 
of  the  redoubtable  Jephthah,  and  send  for  the  man 


A  TRAGEDY  OF  BLUNDER  151 

they  had  cast  out,  to  come  back  and  fight  their  battles 
for  them. 

Now  from  the  day  he  was  intrusted  with  the  cap- 
taincy of  Israel  Jephthah  became  a  better  man,  deeper, 
more  serious,  humble-minded  and  godly  than  ever  he 
had  been.  His  whole  nature  is  deeply  stirred  by  the 
crisis.  He  feels  as  never  before  his  utter  need  of  God, 
his  helplessness,  the  futility  of  all  his  valour  and  his 
skilful  stratagems,  without  God.  And  so,  says  the 
historian,  he  '^uttered  all  his  words"  before  the  Lord 
in  Mizpeh.  He  laid  before  the  Lord  all  his  schemes, 
his  whole  plan  of  campaign;  and,  as  Luther  once 
plainly  told  the  Lord  that  He  Himself,  and  not  the  poor 
monk,  Martin  Luther,  must  save  His  Church,  so 
Jephthah  told  the  Lord  that  he  would  not  face  this 
battle,  not  a  step  would  he  march,  not  a  sword  would 
he  draw,  unless  he  could  be  sure  of  God.  And  how 
was  he  to  be  made  sure  of  God?  In  this  wise: 
Jephthah  vowed  a  vow  unto  the  Lord,  and  said,  "If 
thou  shalt  without  fail  deliver  the  children  of  Ammon 
into  mine  hands,  then  it  shall  be  that  whatsoever 
Cometh  forth  of  the  doors  of  my  house  to  meet  me, 
when  I  return  in  peace  from  the  children  of  Ammon, 
it  shall  surely  be  the  Lord's,  and  I  will  offer  it  for  a 
burnt-offering." 

Here  is  the  first  act  in  Jephthah's  tragedy  of  blunder. 
He  thought  that  God  could  be  bribed;  needed,  indeed, 
to  be  bribed  and  bought  to  support  the  righteous  cause 
— Jephthah's  cause.  I  am  not  now  speaking  of  the 
hideous  nature  of  the  inducement  offered,  a  human 
sacrifice  ( for  there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt  that  this 
was  the  intention  of  the  vow) ;  but  simply  of  this, 


152  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

that  Jephthah  had  such  a  conception  of  the  God  he 
worshipped  as  to  suppose  that  He  was  open  to  induce- 
ment, and  needed  an  inducement,  to  help  and  prosper 
the  righteous  cause.  Well,  let  us  not  blame  Jephthah 
for  this.  Don't  dare,  one  of  you,  to  throw  a  stone  at 
Jephthah  for  these  crude  thoughts  and  imaginings. 
Such  was  the  theology  of  his  rude,  semi -barbarous 
age.  Far  rather  lay  to  heart  the  magnificent  truth 
which  those  Old  Testament  saints  and  heroes  so  mag- 
nificently teach  us — that  the  one  thing  a  man  needs  to 
be  sure  of  is  God.  That  at  any  rate  those  men  of  the 
Old  Testament  knew  right  well.  There  they  trod 
firmly.  They  did  not,  like  our  pious  ancestors,  carve 
''Except  the  Lord  build  the  house"  on  their  door- 
lintels,  but  they  wrote  it  on  their  hearts,  they  wrote 
it  upon  the  threshold  of  every  seed-time  and  every 
harvest,  of  every  battle  they  fought,  every  enterprise 
which  they  put  their  hands  unto.  And  they  stand 
there,  in  their  histories  and  psalms  and  prayers,  the 
appointed  teachers  of  that  truth  to  all  men  in  all  ages. 
Let  us  learn  it. 

But  learn  too  from  Jephthah's  mistake.  That 
detestable  idea,  the  root-idea  of  all  paganism — that 
idea  of  bargaining  with  a  Higher  Power,  of  trying  to 
bring  God  over  to  our  view,  of  coaxing  God  by  prayers 
and  entreaties,  or  by  vows  and  promises,  to  be  of  our 
mind  and  to  give  us  what  we  want,  though  the  Gospel 
of  Christ  has  struck  at  the  root  of  the  lie,  is  never 
wholly  extinct.  I  say  to  you,  seek  like  Jephthah  to 
make  sure  of  God  as  your  leader  and  ally  through 
all  the  long  campaign  of  life.  Say  to  Him,  the  battle 
is  not  mine,  but  Thine.    Say  like  Moses,  "Except  thou 


A  TRAGEDY  OF  BLUNDER  153 

go  with  me,  carry  me  not  up  hence;  I  dare  not  and 
I  will  not  venture  the  journey  alone."  Make  sure  of 
God.  Yes,  but  how  ?  There  is  one  only  way.  In  the 
nature  of  the  case  there  can  be  but  one  way,  one 
infallible  and  most  blessed  way.  God  cannot  come 
over  to  our  view  and.  our  way.  We  must  go  over  to 
His.  God  cannot  change,  cannot  be  conformed  to  us; 
we  must  be  conformed  to  Him.  The  source  of  all  our 
human  unrest  and  fear  is  that  we  seek  not  the  King- 
dom of  God,  but  the  kingdom  of  self.  Other  foun- 
dation can  no  man  lay  than  this — Seek  ye  first  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  H  we  can  but  build  upon  that! 
If  we  only  have  the  heart,  the  courage  in  us,  to  build 
all  upon  that — so  to  live  for  God's  ends  that  what 
concerns  us  will  even  more  concern  Him,  that  His 
interests  will  be  our  interests,  and  ours  His;  that  our 
defeat  would  be  His  defeat  and  our  victory  will  be  His 
triumph ;  that  He  and  we  are  one  in  holy  alliance,  and 
no  dividing  wedge  can  be  driven  between,  nothing 
separate  us  from  the  love  of  God!  That  is  the  place 
of  victory  to  which  we  have  entrance  in  Jesus  Christ, 
and  into  which  God  is  ever  seeking  to  bring  us  more 
decisively  and  completely  by  all  the  conflict  and  dis- 
cipline of  our  lives.  "The  way  of  the  Lord  is  strength 
to  the  upright."  Only  pray  and  see  to  it  that  the  way 
of  the  Lord  be  your  way,  and  all  your  striving  will  be 
a  striving  together  with  God,  in  God's  strength;  all 
things  will  be  leagued  together  to  help  you  onward; 
even  things  that  seem  only  bafifling  and  irritating  and 
hurtful,  the  events  we  call  misfortunes,  will  only  guide 
into  a  more  fruitful  path  the  life  of  the  man  whose 
will  is  to  do  the  will  of  God 


154  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

But  another  great  truth,  and  another  blundering 
interpretation  of  that  truth,  are  seen  in  the  story  of 
Jephthah's  terrible  vow.  There  is  the  truth  of  sacrifice. 
Jephthah  was  under  no  illusions.  He  knew  that  there 
is  a  price,  a  high  price  to  pay  for  all  high  achievement. 
He  was  no  shallow-souled  dilettante.  He  had  been 
in  no  haste  to  put  his  hand  to  the  plough,  but  when 
he  did  so,  it  was  with  the  resolve  to  plough  the  furrow 
to  the  end,  though  it  should  be  by  wading  in  blood. 
Nor  did  he  dream  of  delivering  Israel  only  by  the 
sacrifice  of  others.  The  rough  old  hero  had  looked 
deeply  into  the  heart  of  life,  and  knew  full  well  that 
his  call  to  be  the  deliverer  of  his  people  was  not  a 
call  to  easy  victory  and  cheap  glory.  It  was  a  call  to 
suffering,  to  fierce  struggle,  to 

iron  sacrifice 
Of  body,  will,  and  soul; 

and  he  was  ready  to  pay  the  price.  So,  in  the  fervour 
of  his  devotion  he  vows,  "Whatsoever  cometh  forth 
of  the  doors  of  my  house  to  meet  me,  I  will  offer  it  for 
a  burnt-offering."  Again,  look  past  the  blundering 
form  of  the  thing,  and  open  your  hearts  to  the  eternal 
truth  of  it,  that  the  condition  of  all  spiritual  victory,  all 
effectual  service,  every  true  deliverance  wrought  in  the 
earth,  is  sacrifice.  It  is  a  truth  which  may  be  un- 
palatable. People  for  the  most  part  are  willing  to 
follow  the  right  rather  than  the  wrong,  as  a  matter  of 
mere  preference;  but  when  to  do  so  requires  sacrifice, 
many  do  not  feel  that  this  can  be  reasonably  expected 
of  them;  many  are  willing  to  give  a  trifle  of  their 
means  and  a  small  portion  of  their  time  and  interest 


A  TRAGEDY  OF  BLUNDER  155 

to  the  service  of  God's  Kingdom;  but  that  this  should 
be  carried  to  the  point  of  sacrifice,  of  subtracting  aught 
from  their  comfort  or  their  freedom  in  other  direc- 
tions, is  a  doctrine  they  cannot  receive.  Frankly  and 
unashamed,  as  if  stating  an  axiom  that  can  be  ques- 
tioned by  no  rational  person,  they  will  tell  you  that  a 
man's  first  duty  is  to  himself,  and  only  in  so  far  as  it 
does  not  interfere  with  that,  can  one  be  expected  to 
help  in  the  good  cause.  But  Jephthah  knew  the  eternal 
law  of  things.  Salvation  of  any  kind  costs.  It  comes 
never  by  water  only,  but  by  blood  also.  Life  is  won  only 
by  life  laid  down.  No  true  work  can  be  done  in  this 
world  without  sacrifice,  no  true  battle  fought,  no  real 
progress  achieved.  You  cannot  effectually  help  a  single 
soul  nor  lighten  its  burden  except  by  putting  your  own 
soul  under  the  load.  And  Jephthah's  heart  leaps  up  in 
fervent  response  to  this  truth.  He  consecrates  his 
leadership  with  sacrificial  vow.  Strong  in  his  compact 
with  God  and  with  his  own  soul, 

Burningly  offered  up,  to  bleed, 
To  bear,  to  break,  but  not  to  fail, 

he  goes  out  to  battle  with  the  Ammonites.  Can  we 
wonder  that  Jephthah  won  the  day? 

But  now  we  reach  the  climax  of  the  story,  so  over- 
whelming in  its  pathos  and  tragic  power,  when 
Jephthah  has  to  pay  the  price.  He  comes  home  in 
triumph,  and  ''his  daughter  came  out  to  meet  him  with 
timbrels  and  dances ;  and  she  was  his  only  child ;  beside 
her  he  had  neither  son  nor  daughter."  In  all  literature 
I  know  nothing  more  poignant  than  these  simple  words : 
"She  was  his  only  child ;  beside  her  he  had  neither  son 


156  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

nor  daughter."  They  seem  to  reveal  to  us  the  one 
sweet  paradise  in  a  rough,  hard  Hfe.  Dishonoured  and 
disinherited,  a  kinless  outcast  and  exile,  he  had  found 
in  her  love  and  her  fair  budding  v^omanhood  the  solace 
of  his  lonely  heart,  the  light  of  his  lonely  home.  Her 
bright  presence,  her  affection  and  girlish  laughter 
had  become  the  natural  music  of  his  life.  And  now 
she  sallies  forth  to  meet  him,  clad  in  her  gayest  ap- 
parel, her  face  radiant  with  joyous  excitement,  her 
timbrel  clashing  to  the  chant  of  triumph,  as  she  leads 
the  merry  troop  who  hail  her  father — ^her  father — 
chief  and  victor,  Israel's  captain  and  deliverer.  At 
the  sight,  what  horror  freezes  his  very  soul!  How, 
in  a  moment,  the  sunshine  is  blotted  out,  and  the  world 
becomes  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death!  He  looks 
at  the  gay  young  figure  with  blind  stupor  in  his  eyes ; 
and  then  as  feeling  rallies  from  its  swoon,  words 
wrench  themselves  out  of  his  agony:  "Alas,  my 
daughter!  thou  hast  brought  me  very  low,  and  thou 
art  one  of  them  that  trouble  me."  The  appalling  truth 
is  told,  and  Jephthah  says :  *T  have  opened  my  mouth 
unto  the  Lord,  and  I  cannot  go  back."  Was  it  not 
sublime?  "I  have  opened  my  mouth  unto  the  Lord, 
and  I  cannot  go  back."  Surely  such  words  are  a 
heritage  for  ever.  In  all  likelihood  Jephthah' s  vow 
was  a  private  one.  The  compact  was  between  his  own 
soul  and  God  alone.  And  we  know  how  men  are  apt 
to  treat  such  vows.  Under  the  pressure  of  some  crisis 
in  our  lives,  in  some  distress  of  soul,  when  a  calamity 
or  humiliation  is  threatening  that  makes  our  faults 
stand  out  in  letters  of  fire,  we  vow  amendment.  Never 
again  will  we  yield  to  that  temptation;  we  will  be 


A  TRAGEDY  OF  BLUNDER  157 

more  serious,  more  prayerful,  more  mindful  of  our 
walk  with  God.  But  when  the  crisis  is  over  and  feel- 
ing sinks  back  to  its  normal  level,  how  do  our  lives 
slide  back  insensibly  into  the  old  groove!  Our  vows 
and  resolutions,  how  often  are  they  writ  in  water! 
And  Jephthah  might  have  found  pretexts  enough  to 
absolve  him  from  his  rash  and  terrible  vow.  Our 
power  of  casuistry  would  be  easily  equal  to  inventing 
them  for  him.  But  his  true  heart  would  have  none 
of  them.  He  had  vowed  that  he  would  save  his  people 
at  whatever  cost  to  himself;  he  had  opened  his  mouth 
to  the  Lord,  and  could  not  go  back. 

But  his  daughter — she  had  given  no  consent  to  the 
bargain.  Will  she  not  on  her  part  repudiate  its  obli- 
gation? protest  that  she  at  any  rate  had  not  opened 
her  mouth  to  the  Lord?  Will  she  not  rebel  against 
being  made  the  price  of  her  misguided  parent's  too 
fervent  devotion  ?  She  does  not  even  murmur.  When 
Jephthah  told  her  of  his  vow,  and  why  he  had  made 
it,  she  understood;  her  spirit  caught  flame  from  his; 
she  was  a  soldier's  and  a  patriot's  child,  and  shared 
to  the  full  his  exalted  passion.  Proudly  she  recognised 
that  her  life  was  the  price  of  Israel's  deliverance.  Was 
it  not  a  soldier's  glory  to  give  his  life  for  the  salvation 
of  his  people,  and  should  it  be  less  the  glory  of  Jeph- 
thah's  daughter  ?  And  as  she  looked  up  into  her  sorely 
stricken  father's  face,  with  the  gleam  of  a  heroism 
matching  his  own  in  her  eyes,  she  said:  "Do  to  me 
according  to  that  which  hath  proceeded  out  of  thy 
mouth,  forasmuch  as  the  Lord  hath  taken  vengeance 
for  thee  of  thine  enemies,  even  of  the  children  of 
Ammon."     We  are  here  among  the  high  mountain- 


158  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

peaks  of  life.  That  rugged  Hebrew  bandit  and  his 
child — how  their  loyalty  to  truth,  their  power  of  self- 
devotion  to  the  uttermost,  their  unflinching  resolve 
to  go  all  the  way,  to  pay  the  full  price,  the  price  of 
blood,  for  God  and  duty  and  fatherland — how  these 
things  thrill  us  to-day.  They  transfigure  with  a 
heavenly  light  the  dark  tragedy  of  their  fate.  Human 
nature,  as  we  sometimes  see,  can  sink  very  low;  but 
such  deeds  and  such  tempers  as  these  lift  us  up;  they 
declare  to  us  how  far  we  can  go  and  how  high  we 
can  rise;  they  allure  all  that  is  truest  and  noblest  in 
us,  and  beckon  us  onward  to  the  far  horizon. 

And  yet  we  cannot  but  see  in  it  all,  blunder,  the 
tragedy  of  blunder.  Jephthah  stands  there  an  unfor- 
gettable warning  against  the  blunder  of  the  gratuitous, 
self-appointed  sacrifice.  We  have  been  well  fore- 
warned that  to  follow  Christ  we  must  take  up  our 
cross;  but  to  find  or  make  a  cross  is  no  part  of  the 
Christian's  calling.  If  we  follow  Christ,  the  right  cross, 
let  us  never  fear,  the  cross  we  need,  the  cross  that 
will  ne;ver  injure  but  only  bless  us  all  our  life  through, 
will  find  us.  It  will  plant  itself  in  the  way  which  duty 
bids  us  take,  so  that  there  will  be  no  missing  it  except 
by  turning  aside  from  the  right  way.  The  self- 
appointed  cross  is  always  a  blunder.  It  is  instructive 
to  compare  John  Bunyan  and  his  daughter  with  Jeph- 
thah and  his  daughter.  Think  of  Bunyan  in  jail, 
brooding  over  his  blind  Mary,  the  favourite  of  his 
heart.  "Poor  child,"  thought  I,  "what  sorrow  art 
thou  like  to  have  for  thy  portion  in  the  world !  Thou 
must  be  beaten,  must  beg,  suffer  hunger,  cold,  naked- 
ness, and  a  thousand  calamities,  though  I  cannot  now 


A  TRAGEDY  OF  BLUNDER  159 

endure  the  wind  should  blow  upon  thee.  But  yet  I 
must  venture  you  all  with  God,  though  it  goeth  to 
the  quick  to  leave  you.  Oh!  I  saw,  I  was  as  a  man 
who  was  pulling  down  his  house  upon  the  heads  of 
his  wife  and  children;  yet  I  thought  on  those  two 
milch  kine  that  were  to  carry  the  Ark  of  God  into 
another  country  and  to  leave  their  calves  behind  them." 
Btmyan's  sacrifice  was  as  real,  as  sublime  as  Jephthah's. 
But  the  one,  appointed  by  the  All-wise  Will,  brought 
no  regrets  in  its  train,  but  gave  birth  to  the  Pilgrim's 
Progress;  the  other,  an  arbitrary  appointment  of  man's 
own  will,  was  a  tragedy,  relieved  only  by  the  heroism 
which  sustained  its  agony.  Our  proper  cross,  I  say, 
will  always  find  us.  When  we  put  our  lives  outright 
into  Christ's  hands,  when  we  ask  him  to  be  our  Master 
and  Guide,  He  says  to  us  as  of  old,  *'Ye  know  not 
what  ye  ask."  We  know  not  what  trial  or  discipline 
we  are  inviting — we  know  only  that  to  be  near  Him 
is  to  be  near  the  fire — but  it  is  for  Him  to  send  it, 
for  us  to  accept  it  when  it  is  sent.  And  be  sure,  this 
is  a  far  more  testing  thing,  demanding  far  more  faith 
and  humility  and  self -surrender,  than  to  practise  all 
the  self-imposed  austerities  of  the  ascetic. 

Finally,  in  a  sentence  it  may  be  said  that  there  runs 
through  Jephthah's  story  the  mistaken  idea  as  to  what 
true  sacrifice  is,  and  that  in  it  we  see  that  idea  in  its 
most  dreadful  form — the  idea  that  the  one  way  by  which 
a  human  life  may  be  completely  devoted  to  God's  serv- 
ice is  by  slaying  it  and  putting  an  end  to  its  activities. 
"I  beseech  you  by  the  mercies  of  God,"  says  the  New 
Testament,  "that  ye  present  your  bodies  a  living  sacri- 
fice."   In  the  scenes  of  busy  labour,  in  the  paths  of  anx- 


i6o  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

ious  toil,  in  the  hour  of  temptation,  in  sorrow  and  in 
joy,  sickness  and  health,  in  abundance  and  in  poverty; 
in  all  these  to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy  and  to  walk 
humbly  with  God,  to  say,  "Lo,  I  come,  I  delight  to  do 
thy  will" — this  is  the  Christian  sacrifice.  To  such  sacri- 
fice we  are  called  and  appointed.  Let  us  not  forget 
it.  Jephthah  was  wrong,  hideously  wrong  in  his 
theology;  nevertheless  he  was  nobly  right  in  his  spirit. 
He  did  the  best  he  knew;  he  gave  to  God  the  best 
he  had.  God  grant  to  you  and  me  that  with  our 
purer  faith  and  Christian  enlightenment  we  may  act 
as  loyally!  Let  us  take  away  in  our  hearts  the  abid- 
ing truth,  that  our  lives  are  not  our  own  to  give  or 
to  withhold,  or  to  spend  as  we  choose  on  selfish  whims 
or  for  petty  aims.  They  are  claimed  by  the  Infinite 
Love.  They  are  dignified,  they  are  consecrated  by 
the  Blood  of  Divine  Sacrifice;  and  to  know  Christ,  and 
follow  Him,  and  do  His  work  and  fight  His  battles  and 
share  His  victory,  we  must  live  the  sacrificial  life. 
Christian  men  and  Women,  we  have  opened  our  mouth 
unto  the  Lord,  and  we  cannot  go  back. 


XIII 
The  Wonder- Working  God 

Thus  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts :  If  it  be  marvellous  in  the  eyes 
of  the  remnant  of  this  people  in  these  days,  should  it  also  be 
marvellous  in  mine  eyes?  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts. — Zech.  8:  6. 

In  this  chapter  Zechariah  describes  the  city  of  his 
dreams,  the  Jerusalem  that  is  to  be.  His  imagination 
does  not  rise  to  the  apocalyptic  sublimities  of  the 
sixtieth  chapter  of  Isaiah;  the  picture  is  simple,  homely, 
lifelike.  Peace  shall  once  more  reign  within  the  walls 
of  the  Holy  City,  and  prosperity  in  her  palaces.  The 
exiles  will  return  from  the  rising  and  from  the  setting 
of  the  sun.  The  days  of  struggle  and  poverty  will 
be  ended,  and  fasts  will  be  changed  into  cheerful  feasts. 
Religion  will  flourish,  and  the  blessing  of  Heaven  will 
rest  so  manifestly  upon  the  new  Israel  that  in  those 
days  ten  men  of  all  languages  will  take  hold  of  the 
skirts  of  a  Jew  and  say,  *'We  will  go  with  you,  for  we 
have  heard  that  God  is  with  you."  But  there  is 
nothing  else  in  the  description  so  arresting  and  ex- 
quisite as  the  glimpse  given  of  the  streets  of  the  new 
Jerusalem.  It  is  not  the  magnificence  of  buildings, 
nor  the  ceaseless  flow  of  traffic,  nor  the  profuse  dis- 
play of  varied  merchandise  in  the  bazaars  that  en- 
trances the  prophet's  eye.  He  sees  there  happy,  con- 
tented old  men  and  women  sitting  in  the  warm  sun- 
shine, every  one  leaning  on  his  staff  for  very  age, 
while  around  them  troops  of  boys  and  girls  enliven 

i6i 


i62  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

the  scene  with  the  frolics  and  sports  of  childhood. 
Evidently  this  is  intended  as  a  bright  contrast  to  the 
state  of  things  in  the  city  as  it  then  was.  The  Jeru- 
salem of  Zechariah's  time  was  a  colony  of  immigrants. 
The  population  would  consist  disproportionately  of 
men,  young  and  in  middle  age.  Life  was  hard  and 
strenuous,  and  the  struggle  for  existence  gave  little 
encouragement  to  marriage  and  the  rearing  of  chil- 
dren, while  it  allowed  few  to  reach  the  haven  of 
sheltered  old  age.  The  conditions  were  such  as  you 
might  still  find  in  some  of  our  pioneer  settlements — 
a  rough,  hard  society  where  only  the  strongest  can 
find  a  place,  unblessed  by  those  softening  and  refining 
influences,  childhood  and  old  age.  But  in  the  future 
all  this  will  be  changed.  In  the  peaceful  days  to  come, 
the  aged  whose  day  of  toil  is  past  will  have  their  seat 
and  their  hours  of  quiet  talk  in  the  sweet  morning 
sunshine,  while  the  merry  diversions  of  their  chil- 
dren's children  bring  back  to  them  the  memory  of 
their  own  long-past  youth. 

But  would  these  idyllic  scenes  ever  be  more  than 
a  dream?  Zechariah  sees  a  look  of  stolid  incredulity 
on  the  faces  of  his  hearers.  *'Ah!"  these  hardset, 
careworn  faces  seem  to  say,  "this  Jerusalem  of  yours 
is  a  city  in  the  clouds,  and  in  the  clouds  it  will  remain. 
Prophets  a  many  before  you  have  dipped  their  brush 
in  sunshine  and  painted  a  golden  future — and  what 
has  come  of  it  all?  We  are  grown  too  bankrupt  in 
hope  to  listen  to  your  tale  of  wonders."  And  Zech- 
ariah has  his  answer  for  them.  "Is  it  wonderful  in 
the  eyes  of  the  remnant  of  this  people  in  those  days; 
should  it  also  be  wonderful  in  mine  eyes,  saith  the 


THE  WONDER-WORKING  GOD        163 

Lord  of  hosts?"  **Do  you  make  your  own  limited 
conceptions  the  measure  of  His  possibiHties  ?  Is  He  not 
a  God  that  doeth  wonders?  Is  not  that  His  character, 
His  history?  Are  not  wonders,  so  to  say,  His  daily 
bread?  If  it  be  wonderful  in  your  eyes,  does  it  follow 
that  it  should  be  wonderful  in  His?" 

Here  is  a  great  truth  for  us  to  ponder,  and  like  all 
great  truths  it  is  very  simple  and  elementary;  there  is 
nothing  recondite  or  far-fetched  in  it.  But  it  is  one 
of  the  pillars  of  life,  and  if  we  can  but  grasp  it,  and 
take  it  as  a  living  truth  into  our  souls,  it  will  many  a 
time  change  our  outlook  upon  life  and  put  a  new 
spirit  into  our  religion.  Nothing  is  wonderful,  in  the 
sense  that  it  is  surprising,  except  in  relation  to  the 
power  that  does  it.  As  a  child  gazes  with  astonishment 
at  the  feats  of  a  full-grown  man,  as  the  commonplace 
of  civilisation  is  nothing  short  of  a  miracle  to  the 
untutored  savage,  and  as  it  is  only  natural  that  this 
should  be  the  case,  so  ought  we  to  expect  that  in  a 
world  created  and  conducted  by  God  we  shall  con- 
stantly meet  with  what  seems  to  us  marvel,  processes 
beyond  our  comprehension  and  results  beyond  our 
hopes.  God's  commonplaces  are  our  marvels;  our 
marvels  are  God's  commonplaces. 

In  the  first  place  let  us  for  a  little  consider  the  fact. 
God  not  only  has  done  things  great  and  marvellous 
in  the  past.  He  is  constantly  doing  them.  We  think 
it  marvellous  that  in  the  beginning  God  created  the 
heavens  and  the  earth.  But  heaven  and  earth  are  as 
full  of  marvel  and  mystery  at  this  moment  as  when 
God  created  them.  "I  saw  not  long  since  a  sign  in 
the  heavens,"  writes  Luther  at  a  time  of  great  dis- 


i64  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

couragement.  And  what  was  the  portent?  What 
blazing  comet,  meteor  or  celestial  apparition?  "I  was 
looking  out  of  my  window,"  he  continues,  "and  beheld 
the  stars  and  the  whole  majestic  vault  of  heaven, 
without  being  able  to  see  the  pillars  on  which  the 
Lord  has  caused  it  to  rest."  Just  that  ancient  miracle 
which  the  heavens  have  been  showing  nightly  to  men 
since  the  heavens  were,  which  we  may  gaze  upon  out 
there  as  we  leave  the  church  this  evening.  Men  dis- 
pute about  miracles.  Miracles  don't  happen,  they  say. 
Why,  they  are  happening  all  the  time.  If  by  miracle 
you  mean  what  is  in  its  nature  absolutely  marvellous, 
what  defies  analysis  and  passes  comprehension,  what 
brings  you  face  to  face  with  an  inscrutable  power  which 
works  behind  and  within  all  things,  the  direct  power 
of  the  living,  wonder-working  God,  I  say  that  miracle 
is  everywhere.  Every  "flower  in  the  crannied  wall," 
every  blade  of  grass,  every  motion  of  your  own  body 
in  obedience  to  your  will,  is  a  miracle.  Existence 
itself,  the  mere  fact  that  we  are,  or  that  anything  is, 
seems  to  me  the  greatest  miracle  of  all.  You  cannot 
try  to  think  of  any  least  thing  down  to  the  root  of  it 
without  finding  yourself  in  the  presence  of  the  divine 
mystery;  and  it  is  only  because  we  do  not  think  that 
we  become  blind  to  the  marvel  of  God's  commonplaces. 
Every  morning  God  says  "Let  there  be  light,"  and  every 
morning  is  just  as  wonderful  as  the  first.  Every  year 
God  says,  "Let  the  earth  bring  forth  grass  and  herb 
yielding  seed  after  its  kind,"  and  every  springtime 
with  every  sprouting  seed  and  swelling  bud  is  as  much 
the  work  of  incomprehensible  divine  power  as  the 
first.    God  said,  "Let  us  make  man  in  our  own  image, 


THE  WONDER-WORKING  GOD        165 

after  our  likeness" ;  and  God  is  still  making  man  after 
His  own  image.  The  birth  of  every  babe  is  as  mys- 
terious and  divinely  wonderful  as  the  creation  of 
Adam. 

The  works  of  man  astonish  by  their  novelty;  but 
the  works  of  God  are  only  the  more  wonderful  the 
more  they  are  inquired  into.  Men  were  for  a  time 
amazed  by  the  telegraph  and  the  telephone,  just  as 
the  savage  is  by  simple  writing.  By-and-by,  how- 
ever, the  sense  of  wonder  wears  off  as  completely  in 
the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  But  if  you  will  only 
think  of  God's  great  commonplace  that  lies  beneath 
all  these  devices  of  man,  the  mystery  of  thought  and 
language,  the  power  to  conceive  and  express  thought 
and  feeling,  and  to  transmit  these  from  mind  to  mind, 
you  will  find  it  matter  for  inexhaustible  marvel. 
Science  itself  only  enables  us  to  perceive  more  clearly 
that  the  great  divine  commonplaces  are  the  true 
miracles. 

And  again  in  God's  guidance  of  human  life  we  con- 
stantly discover  matter  for  deep  wonder.  How  utterly 
marvellous  are  the  intertwinings  of  providential  plan 
even  in  a  single  human  life!  How  wonderfully  God 
guides  men,  so  that  they  have  to  confess  that  their 
best  things  have  come  to  them  by  no  contrivance  of 
their  own,  and  as  they  look  back  upon  the  path  they 
have  travelled  are  convinced  that  a  wisdom  not  their 
own,  but  mysterious  and  divine,  has  directed  their 
steps!  But  all  these  things,  marvellous  to  us,  are,  so 
to  say,  God's  routine  and  beaten  track.  It  is  His  every- 
day work  to  lead  the  blind  by  a  path  that  they  know 
not;  to  make  darkness  light  before  them,  and  crooked 


i66  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

things  straight.  He  holds  by  the  right  hand,  He  guides 
with  His  eye;  He  brings  through  fire  and  water  into  a 
wealthy  place.  Such  knowledge  is  too  wonderful  for 
us.  How  God  holds  in  His  own  hand  all  the  threads 
with  which  men  weave  the  web  of  history,  and  so 
holds  them  as  to  control  the  pattern  of  the  web,  is 
beyond  the  comprehension  of  finite  minds.  Yet  all 
this  is  only  God's  commonplace. 

But  above  all  else  marvellous  are  the  moral  miracles 
God  constantly  works.  What  else  in  this  world  is  so 
wonderful  as  the  conversion  of  a  sinner,  the  begetting 
of  a  new  spirit  at  the  centre  of  life?  When  the  proud 
man  becomes  humble  as  a  little  child,  the  greedy 
generous,  the  blasphemer  devout,  when  men  and 
women  are  lifted  out  of  the  mire  of  worldliness  or 
sensualism,  are  baptised  and  cleansed  by  the  fire  of  a 
heavenly  love,  what  marvel  is  there  in  the  creation  of 
new  stars  or  suns  to  compare  with  this  new  moral 
creation?  In  the  fact  that  a  man  can  turn  his  back 
not  only  upon  his  former  life  but  upon  his  former 
self,  there  is  something  illogical,  something  the  depth 
of  which  at  least  the  plummet  of  our  human  logic 
cannot  sound.  If  there  is  anything  equally  marvellous 
it  is  only  the  further  triumphs  of  God  in  the  redeemed 
life.  When  we  see  men  resisting  seductive  temptations 
because  they  believe  in  a  God  they  have  never  seen, 
content  in  poverty,  humble  in  wealth,  at  peace  amid 
heart-shaking  commotions,  because  God  is  theirs — when 
we  think  what  men  and  women  of  common  clay  like 
ourselves  have  done  and  suffered  as  seeing  Him  who  is 
invisible  and  for  a  heaven  beyond  the  clouds,  we  have 
before  us  the  most  marvellous  spectacle  earth  has  to 


THE  WONDER-WORKING  GOD        167 

show.  Yet  all  this  is  nothing  marvellous  in  God's  eyes. 
It  is  nothing  extraordinary  with  him  to  make  the 
weakest  more  than  conquerors.  It  is  God's  common- 
place. 

Now,  what  Zechariah  reproached  the  people  of 
Jerusalem  with  was  that  they  ignored  all  this.  The 
vision  of  the  new  Jerusalem  he  held  up  to  them  was 
marvellous,  and  therefore^  they  argued,  unlikely  to  be 
true.  They  were  unable  to  conceive  how  it  could  be 
realised,  and  therefore  they  were  incredulous  of  its 
ever  being  realised.  And  that  is  how  we  ourselves 
reason,  almost  invariably  and  on  every  kind  of  sub- 
ject. We  make  our  own  minds,  our  own  ideas,  the 
measure  of  all  things.  If  another  Zechariah  were  to 
come  to  us  with  another  such  prophecy,  were  to  predict 
such  a  development  of  spiritual  power  in  the  Churches 
that  within  this  generation  the  whole  world  would 
be  evangelised,  that  this  people  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific  should  become  a  really  Christian  nation, 
that  war  should  become  as  extinct  as  the  duel,  a  new 
baptism  of  spiritual  fervour  sweep  away  the  evils  and 
corruptions  of  society,  and  a  new  era  of  spiritual 
progress  be  inaugurated  on  the  earth,  such  a  message 
would  find  most  of  us  secretly  sceptical  or  openly 
incredulous.  Now,  why  is  this  ?  What  is  it  that  keeps 
men,  even  those  who  believe  in  God,  from  living  in 
the  expectation,  the  natural  and  rational  expectation, 
of  His  doing  marvels? 

One  cause  is  that  we  reason,  or  imagine  that  we 
reason,  from  experience.  We  say.  What  has  been 
will  be.  And  to  reason  from  experience  is  as  unob- 
jectionable as  it  is  inevitable.     Inductive  logic  gives 


l68  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

sound  guidance.  But  with  what  warrant  from  ex- 
perience itself  do  we  thus  discount  the  marvellous,  or 
even  the  unprecedented?  What  would  have  been  the 
history  of  the  world  and  of  the  Church  had  it  been 
always  determined  by  previous  experience  ?  No  Christ 
would  ever  have  come  into  the  world;  the  Christian 
Church  would  never  have  come  into  existence;  no 
Reformation,  no  rise  of  Foreign  Missions  could  have 
taken  place;  no  onward  movement  whatsoever.  His- 
tory would  have  been  frozen  at  its  source,  strangled 
in  its  cradle.  Take  just  the  one  supreme  example. 
What  fantastic  lunacy  had  it  seemed  to  tell  Pilate 
that  the  man  he  scornfully  abandoned  to  the  Cross 
would  be  raised  to  such  honours  as  no  Caesar  ever 
received — to  tell  the  crucifiers  of  Christ  that  that 
cross  they  were  erecting  and  should  take  down  again 
before  sunset  would  be  the  spiritual  centre  of  humanity, 
to  which  all  nations  and  generations  would  turn  for 
hope  and  healing.  Reason  from  experience  ?  Yes.  But 
what  experience  teaches  is  that  we  must  not  leave  the 
wonder-working  God  out  of  the  reckoning.  The  page 
of  experience  itself  is  written  all  over  with  marvels,  the 
wonderful,  unexpected,  unprecedented  works  of  God. 
The  history  of  God's  Kingdom  in  this  world  is  largely 
a  history  of  seeming  impossibilities  turned  into  facts, 
a  proof  that  the  very  law  of  the  divine  procedure 
contains  the  element  of  surprise,  of  the  incalculable,  of 
apocalyptic  crises  breaking  in  upon  the  steady  march 
of  things.  *Ts  it  marvellous  In  your  eyes?  Should  it 
also  be  marvellous  in  mine  eyes?  saith  the  Lord." 
We  greatly  need  to  learn  that  ancient  lesson.  We 
limit  God.    We  measure  God's  to-morrow  by  our  own 


THE  WONDER-WORKING  GOD        169 

yesterday.  We  are  ready  to  stop  when  He  has  scarcely 
begun.  We  fall  into  a  habit,  an  almost  cynical  habit, 
of  assuming  that  the  growth  of  good  must  be  very  slow 
— ^almost  imperceptible — if  it  advance  at  all,  of  guard- 
ing ourselves  against  disappointment  by  expecting  little 
— certainly  nothing  marvellous.  And  this  comes  down 
like  a  heavy  freezing  fog  upon  our  Christian  life;  it 
reduces  our  Christian  service  to  the  character  of  a 
stereotyped  routine  and  sometimes  a  mechanical 
"pegging  away."  We  need  to  be  delivered  from  this. 
There  are  few  things  that  I  feel  I  need,  and  that  you 
need,  and  that  the  whole  Church  needs  more  to  be 
delivered  from  than  this  dull,  leaden  weight  of  in- 
expectancy.  It  may  be  a  paradox,  but  it  is  true,  that 
we  ought  to  expect  God  to  astonish  us  by  the  out- 
stretching of  His  holy  arm. 

Another  reason^  why  we  do  not  expect  things  great 
and  marvellous  is  that  we  think  more  of  our  own 
working  than  of  God's.  Our  own  efforts  after  good 
we  know,  and  we  know  how  fitful  and  half-hearted 
they  are,  and  what  a  poor  thing  is  our  own  striving 
after  a  purer  and  higher  life.  Therefore,  knowing  our 
own  force,  and  not  thinking  of  God's,  we  settle  down  to 
small  expectations.  How  many  of  us  are  there  who 
seriously  expect  to  be  ever  wonderfully  better  than 
they  now  are?    We  say  in  our  thoughts:  I  will  try 


*This  is  only  another  aspect  of  the  same  reason.  Both  are 
included  in  the  fact  that  we  have  come  to  believe  one-sidedly  in 
the  immanence  of  God,  while  we  have  ceased  to  believe  vividly 
in  his  transcendence.  I  wish  to  acknowledge  some  indebtedness 
in  this  paragraph  to  Dr.  Leckie's  fine  sermon  on  Marvels  and 
Prayer. — Sermons,  p.  59. 


170  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

to  live  a  decent,  average  life.  We  believe  that  power 
to  be  in  us.  But  any  call  to  stretch  out  the  withered 
hand,  any  call  to  enthusiasm,  to  devoutness,  to  chival- 
rous self-devotion,  leaves  us  cold.  It  sounds  unreal. 
We  cannot  picture  ourselves  in  that  character.  That 
we  should  become  such  persons  would  be  marvellous  in 
our  eyes;  and  we  forget  that  God  has  to  do  with  it, 
we  do  not  ask  whether  it  would  be  marvellous  also  in 
his  eyes. 

There  is  a  common  sa}dng,  a  phrase  we  often  use 
regarding  any  brilliant  hope  or  suggestion  of  great 
good.  Sometimes  lightly,  sometimes  with  a  sigh,  we 
say,  '7f  is  too  good  to  he  true."  If  we  use  these  words 
with  real  meaning,  are  they  not  the  most  profoundly 
atheistical  words  man  can  utter  ?  What  a  verdict  upon 
life  it  is;  that  any  good  thing,  that  would  bring  men 
great  happiness  and  blessing,  is  too  good  to  be  true! 
How  singular  a  commentary  upon  our  faith  in  God! 
If  there  is  a  God  of  boundless  love,  in  whom  all  Hve 
and  move  and  have  their  being,  a  God  who  can  do 
"great  things  and  unsearchable,  marvellous  things  with- 
out number,"  many  things  might  be  too  bad  to  be  true 
(the  puzzle,  indeed,  is  to  see  why  any  bad  thing  is 
true  and  how  in  the  end  any  bad  thing  can  be  true), 
but  that  anything  is  good,  superlatively,  amazingly, 
almost  inconceivably  good,  surely  that  is  the  strongest 
reason  why  it  ought  to  be;  aye,  must  be  and  will  be 
true. 

If  there  is  some  one  here  who  feels  himself  entirely 
impotent  in  the  grasp  of  a  besetting  sin,  and  sees 
himself  doomed,  carried  irresistibly  onward  to  .the 
cataract ;  and  if  it  be  said  to  him,  as  I  say  to  him  now — 


THE  WONDER-WORKING  GOD        171 

"This  need  not  be.  You  may  be  rescued  from  the 
fate  that  you  see  lying  before  you,  rescued  and  saved 
even  now  by  the  power  of  the  living  Christ  who  is 
near  to  all  that  call  upon  Him,  so  that  you  may  go 
forth  from  this  church  to-night  with  your  hand  in 
His  and  your  face  turned  towards  the  light,"  let  him 
not  set  this  aside  with  the  old  melancholy  falsehood — 
"too  good  to  be  true."  H  there  is  any  one  in  trouble, 
shut  up  in  a  narrow  place  out  of  which  no  way  is 
visible,  and  it  is  said  to  him,  as  I  now  say,  *'Be  of  good 
cheer.  God  does  wonderful  things;  He  can  open  up 
a  way  where  none  is  to  be  seen;  in  the  most  desperate 
case  He  can  provide,"  let  him  not  shake  his  head  and 
repeat  the  old  faithless  formula — *'too  good  to  be 
true."  H  it  were  said  to  the  preacher,  "God  will  use 
you  to  lead  many  souls  to  Christ,  and  to  cheer  and 
strengthen  many  in  fighting  a  good  fight" ;  if  it  were 
said  to  the  Sunday-school  teacher,  "God  wall  wonder- 
fully bless  your  work  to  the  boys  or  girls  in  your 
class" ;  if  it  were  said  to  the  Church  of  Christ,  "God 
is  about  to  pour  out  a  plenteous  heavenly  baptism  upon 
you,  which  will  make  you  glow  and  shine  wnth  new 
life,"  should  we  say  these  things  were  too  marvellous? 
Is  it  not  just  these  marvellous  things  we  should  expect 
a  wonder-working  God  to  do? 

Let  us  grasp  this  as  an  operative  truth,  that  our 
marvels  are  God's  commonplaces,  and  it  will  be  new- 
ness of  life.  It  will  give  new  life  to  prayer  and  to  our 
service  of  God's  Kingdom.  To  live  in  the  expectation 
that  the  greatest  difficulties  may  be  wonderfully  over- 
come, the  greatest  evils  wonderfully  put  down,  the 
worst  sinners  wonderfully  led  to  repentance,  and  the 


172  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

weakest  wonderfully  strengthened,  and  that  every- 
where and  by  all  means  God's  Kingdom  may  be 
wonderfully  advanced — this  would  put  new  joy  and 
power  into  our  souls.  And,  as  regards  our  personal  lot, 
to  live  in  the  belief  that  God  will  do  wonderful  things 
for  us,  that  He  will  raise  us  out  of  our  difficulties  or 
give  us  strength  to  conquer  them,  that  He  will  send 
quickening  to  our  souls,  that  we  are  always  on  the 
verge  of  better  things — how  this  would  lift  us  above 
care  and  fear  and  heavy  dulness  of  spirit.  But,  am  I 
inviting  you  to  live  in  a  rose-coloured  dreamland? 
It  is  not  so.  I  am  inviting  you  to  come  out  of  the 
narrow  cavern  of  your  own  limited  ideas  and  experi- 
ences into  the  wide  sunlit  realm  of  God's  glorious 
possibilities  and  promises.  If  we  do  we  shall  find 
there  the  abiding  realities;  in  the  end  we  shall  find 
nothing  too  good  to  be  true.  Not  that  we  shall  have 
no  disappointments — we  assuredly  shall — but  the 
reason  of  any  disappointments  we  may  have  will  be 
this  only;  not  that  what  we  hoped  was  too  good, 
but  that  it  was  not  good  enough,  to  be  true,  that  for 
every  good  we  set  our  hearts  upon  God  has  a  better 
to  offer  us,  and  will  lead  us  by  our  very  disappoint- 
ments to  higher  conceptions  of  good,  to  purer  desires 
and  better  prayers.  The  sum  of  all  is  that  we  cannot 
take  too  bright  a  view  of  our  own  future,  the  Church's 
future,  the  world's  future,  when  in  the  centre  of  that 
view  we  place  Jesus  Christ  crucified,  risen  and  en- 
throned. Nothing  can  be  too  good  to  be  true.  It  may 
be  marvellous  in  our  eyes;  but  it  is  not  marvellous  in 
the  eyes  of  Him  who  is  able  to  do  exceeding  abundantly 
above  all  we  ask  or  think. 


XIV 

The  Fall  of  Jericho 
(A  Missionary  Sermon) 

By    faith   the   walls   of   Jericho    fell   down,   after   they   were 
compassed  about  seven  days. — Heb.  ii:  30. 

Certainly  it  was  by  faith,  great  faith,  it  was  done, 
if  it  was  done  at  all.  The  desert  march  was  over;  the 
Jordan  safely  passed;  all  was  ready  for  an  advance 
into  the  heart  of  the  land.  But  there,  straight  in  front, 
lay  a  mighty  obstacle,  the  walls  and  ramparts  of 
Jericho  rising  among  the  palm-groves.  By  this  massive 
lock  the  door  of  the  country  was  at  once  closed  against 
the  invaders.  That  lock  must  be  forced,  or  they  must 
fail  and  perish  on  the  threshold  of  their  enterprise. 

Scarcely  could  faith  be  put  to  a  severer  test.  The 
end  in  view  was  the  capture  of  a  fortified  city,  and 
the  means  to  be  employed  the  blowing  of  trumpets  in 
a  daily  procession  around  its  walls.  What  could  be 
more  grotesque?  What  relation,  what  conceivable  con- 
nection of  cause  and  effect  could  there  be  between  the 
blowing  of  trumpets  and  the  overthrow  of  massive 
fortifications?  As  the  defenders  of  the  city  saw  the 
absurd  procession  wending  its  way  around  the  walls 
day  after  day,  they  must,  if  they  had  any  inkling  at 
all  of  its  design,  have  looked  upon  it  as  the  procedure 
of  lunatics.     "Blow  your  trumpets  till  your  cheeks 

173 


174  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

crack,"  they  might  have  shouted  from  the  ramparts. 
If  the  enemy  was  capable  of  no  more  serious  kind  of 
warfare  than  this,  Jericho  might  defend  itself  with 
laughter.  Perhaps,  however,  the  inhabitants  of  Jericho 
may  have  surmised  that  this  singular  demonstration 
was  not  intended  to  have  any  military  significance 
or  efficacy.  It  was  an  act  of  worship,  a  calling  forth 
of  unseen  powers.  The  blowing  of  the  sacred  trum- 
pets by  the  priests  was  a  symbolic  act  by  which  Israel 
invoked  the  mercy  and  aid  of  Jehovah.  Jericho,  we 
may  truly  say,  was  captured  by  a  week  of  prayer. 
Whether  we  regard  the  narrative  as  historical  or  as 
legendary,  as  prose  or  as  poetry,  makes  no  real  dif- 
ference; what  matters  is  the  permanent  spiritual  truth 
it  embodies.  "Providence,'*  said  Napoleon  in  the 
famous  maxim  which  expresses  so  cynically  the 
materialist's  view  of  life,  "Providence  is  always  on 
the  side  of  the  biggest  battalions."  But  Israel  was  to 
be  the  apostle  to  the  world  of  the  truth,  and  had  first 
of  all  to  learn  for  itself  the  truth,  that  God  is  God, 
and  that  "God  hath  chosen  the  foolish  things  of  the 
world  to  shame  the  wise,  and  the  weak  things  of  the 
world  to  shame  the  mighty,  and  the  things  that  are 
not  to  bring  to  nought  the  things  that  are";  that  no 
Jericho  is  ever  overthrown  except  by  faith,  no  true 
fight  is  ever  fought  or  true  victory  won  except  by 
men  who  count  upon  an  unseen  omnipotence. 

It  is  only  by  the  same  faith,  and  the  same  test  and 
triumph  of  faith,  that  the  Church's  warfare,  which  has 
its  type  in  those  wars  of  the  Israelites,  is  to  be  carried 
on  to  victory.  What  is  our  Jericho  ?  It  is  the  sin,  the 
pride,  the  intrenched  materiahsm  of  the  world.     To 


THE  FALL  OF  JERICHO  175 

capture  that  Jericho  is  the  work  which  the  Church  of 
Christ  has  to  do  for  its  King.  And  its  own  existence 
depends  upon  its  accompHshing  this  task;  it  must 
conquer  or  itself  ultimately  perish.  Its  objective  is  to 
win  for  Christ  the  millions  who  in  Christian  lands 
live  in  virtual  or  avowed  godlessness,  in  contempt  of 
any  religious  and  spiritual  ideal;  to  overthrow  strong 
and  ancient  systems  of  false  religion  which  are  en- 
throned over  the  continents  of  heathenism;  to  attack 
and  conquer  selfishness,  vice  and  greed  in  their  very 
stronghold,  and,  as  it  was  said  of  old,  to  "turn  the 
world  upside  down."  And  what  forces,  asks  calculat- 
ing reason,  what  weapons  do  we  possess  for  such  an 
enterprise;  what  equipments  of  war  adequate  to  the 
siege  and  to  pulling  down  the  battlements  of  such  a 
Jericho?  Reasoning  from  the  apparent  adequacy 
of  means  to  effect,  we  should  have  to  acknowledge 
that  we  have  none.  It  is  true  that  we  can  no  longer 
say  of  the  Church  what  St.  Paul  said  of  it  in  his 
day,  that  not  many  wise,  not  many  well-born,  not  many 
influential  people,  are  included  in  its  ranks.  Its  re- 
sources in  men  and  money,  learning  and  eloquence, 
zeal  and  devotion,  are  no  longer  despicable;  for  any 
other  purpose  than  the  spiritual  regeneration  of  men 
and  society  they  would  constitute  a  most  formidable 
power.  But  for  this — and  I  do  not  know  that  there 
is  any  truth  of  which  the  preacher  and  the  whole 
Church  need  more  to  have  a  living  conviction  and 
realization — for  this,  for  the  conversion  of  a  single 
soul,  they  avail  no  more  than  would  a  trumpet-blast  of 
itself  avail  to  bring  down  the  walls  of  Jericho. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  men  who  regard  our  efforts 


176  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

from  the  world's  point  of  view,  who  listen  to  our 
trumpet-blowing  or  its  echoes  without  sharing  our 
faith,  are  sometimes  moved  to  ridicule,  sometimes  to 
irritation,  asking,  like  Judas,  To  what  end  is  this  waste? 
Why  build  churches  when  money  is  needed  for  the 
better  housing  of  the  poor?  This  procession  of 
trumpet-blowers,  this  torrent  of  talk,  pouring  itself 
out  without  ceasing  in  pulpits,  Sunday-schools,  and 
mission-halls,  this  perpetual  reiteration  of  old-world 
myths  and  moralisings,  of  hackneyed  but  incom- 
prehensible doctrines  and  threadbare  precepts,  this 
eternal  preaching  under  which  people  yawn  and 
grumble  and  wrangle — what  nonsensical  folly  all  this 
is!  And  foreign  missions!  to  entertain  the  hope  that 
by  sending  out  a  handful  of  missionaries  to  do  these 
same  futile  things  abroad  we  shall  change  the  ancestral 
beliefs,  customs,  and  morals  of  whole  nations,  need 
we  wonder  that  men  of  the  world,  aye,  and  half- 
believing  Christians  as  well,  count  us  fools  for  our 
pains?  And  it  is  well  for  all  of  us  sometimes  to 
pause  in  the  routine  of  our  Christian  service  and  ask 
ourselves  why  we  do  these  things,  why  it  is  rational 
to  do  them  and  to  continue  doing  them.  Why  do 
we  preachers  preach  ?  Why  do  we  and  why  ought  we 
to  go  on  doing  it?  Why  do  we  and  why  ought  we 
all  to  exert  ourselves  for  the  spread  of  the  Gospel? 
What  do  we  expect  from  it,  and  what  is  the  ground 
of  our  expectation?  My  brethren,  one  thing  alone 
can  justify  it  to  rational  men,  the  faith  by  which  the 
walls  of  Jericho  fell,  faith  in  the  Living  God,  in  the 
transcendent  power  and  activity  of  the  Living  God,  in 
the  promise  and  working  of  the  Spirit,  along  with  and 


THE  FALL  OF  JERICHO  177 

through  yet  above  and  beyond  all  human  effort,  to 
make  our  message  His  power  unto  salvation.  It  is 
this  that  makes  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  a  calling 
to  be  engaged  in  by  men  v^ho  seriously  wish  to  make 
the  most  and  best  of  their  lives.  If  I  did  not  believe 
this  I  do  not  think  I  should  again  enter  a  pulpit.  I 
should  betake  myself  to  some  more  useful  occupation 
than  that  of  trying  to  change  men's  very  selves  by 
preaching  to  them,  even  preaching  the  Gospel  of 
Christ. 

Without  God  no  means  are  adequate  to  this  work. 
But  with  God,  with  the  mightiest  power  in  the  uni- 
verse at  work,  the  Spirit,  the  quickening  breath  of  the 
Living  God,  what  means  can  be  too  feeble  to  accom- 
plish his  will?  God  is  not  as  man.  Man  needs  large 
equipments  for  doing  little  things.  He  needs  a  quarry 
to  build  a  cottage;  a  coal  mine,  and  another  of  iron 
ore,  to  make  a  single  nail.  God  does  great  things  with 
the  most  unpretentious  agencies.  He  grows  the  oak 
from  the  acorn;  He  sets  the  coral-insect  to  build  an 
island.  The  stone  which  the  builders  rejected  is  made 
head  of  the  comer.  The  trumpet  is  blown  and  the 
walls  of  Jericho  fall.  Yes,  let  us  consider  well  the 
significance  of  that  wondrous  siege  of  Jericho,  and 
take  fresh  hold  of  the  truth  that  our  part  is  this,  to 
keep  marching  around  the  walls  ("Go  ye  into  all  the 
world")  and  to  keep  the  trumpets  sounding  ("Preach 
the  Gospel  to  every  creature"),  and  to  keep  our  hearts 
lifted  up  to  Him  who  has  said,  "Lo,  I  am  with  you 
always." 

But  there  is  another  great  truth  here.  "By  faith 
the  walls  of  Jericho  fell,  after  they  were  compassed 


178  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

about  seven  days."  The  victories  of  the  Kingdom 
are  won  by  a  power  which  transcends  all  human 
calculation  and  effort,  but  which  nevertheless  works 
through  human  effort,  and  especially  by  the  cumula- 
tive effect  of  persistent  effort.  Think  of  the  story. 
The  children  of  Israel  went  out  as  they  were  bid, 
and  made  their  procession  around  the  city-walls.  But 
nothing  happened;  not  a  stone  of  these  walls  was 
loosened.  And  on  the  second  day,  and  on  the  third 
day,  and  on  to  the  sixth  day,  the  walls  of  Jericho 
apparently  stood  as  they  had  always  stood.  Then  the 
seventh  day  came;  and  be  sure  the  time  was  long  to 
men  engaged  on  so  perilous  an  enterprise.  The 
seventh  day  came,  and  once,  twice,  six  times,  the 
monotonous  circuit  was  made.  Yet  there  was  no  sign 
of  success.  Not  a  gap,  not  a  fissure  was  to  be  seen 
in  those  frowning  fortifications.  What  if  the  be- 
siegers had  even  then  given  way  to  discouragement? 
All  would  have  been  lost;  all  their  previous  efforts 
rendered  fruitless.  Even  the  seventh  encompassing 
of  the  city  seemed  to  be  equally  unavailing  until  the 
last  moment,  and  men's  hearts  were  throbbing  hard 
with  suspense.  But  the  appointed  hour  struck;  the 
strokes  of  the  great  hammer  of  God's  judgments  rang 
out  above  the  doomed  city;  and  in  a  moment  per- 
severing faith  received  its  long-delayed  reward — the 
walls  of  Jericho  fell  in  the  crash  of  irretrievable  ruin. 
The  truth  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  this  narrative 
is  intended  specially  to  teach  is  the  cumulative  effect 
of  continued  effort.  The  broad  statement  is  frequently 
made  that  no  good  word  fitly  spoken,  no  loving  work 
done,  no  particle  of  good  influence  exerted  can  fail 


THE  FALL  OF  JERICHO  179 

of  its  due  result.  And  we  are  bound  to  believe — I 
trust  we  do — that  in  the  ultimate  reckoning  this  will 
be  found  to  be  true,  that  no  seed  of  good  is  sown 
to  be  finally  fruitless,  that  every  Christlike  thought 
even  thrills  somehow  through  the  world,  and  unites 
itself  to  the  current  of  God's  redeeming  purpose.  But 
that  every  separate  attempt  to  do  good  succeeds  by 
itself,  in  its  own  right,  as  it  were,  and  not  as  part  of 
a  cumulative  whole,  is  quite  obviously  untrue.  How 
many  sermons  immediately  effect  what  they  aim  at? 
How  much  of  all  our  Christian  effort?  Consider  the 
vast  output  of  effort,  prayer,  and  holy  influence  on 
the  part  of  Christian  men  and  women  year  by  year, 
the  many  organizations  all  at  work  for  the  conflict  with 
evil  and  the  uplifting  of  the  community.  Why,  if  all 
this  definitely  and  directly  succeeded  in  its  purpose, 
there  would  be  a  gloriously  speedy  clearance  of  the 
world's  sins  and  woes.  Within  a  generation  there 
would  not  be  a  drunkard,  a  libertine,  a  pauper,  an 
unbeliever,  a  God- forgetting  person  in  the  world.  And 
yet  it  is  most  true  that  nothing  done  in  faith  and 
love  is  ever  done  in  vain — no,  nothing — if  only  it  be 
repeated  often  enough,  if  only  we  grow  not  weary  in 
well-doing. 

When  I  look  at  the  walls  of  Jericho  I  learn  that. 
I  see  there  the  sure  and  grand  success  of  cumulative 
effort.  The  first  day's  work  seemed  fruitless,  and  by 
itself  would  have  been  absolutely  fruitless;  and  the 
second  day's,  and  the  third.  Was  the  only  effectual 
work,  then,  that  of  the  seventh  day?  In  a  sense  it 
was — without  it  all  had  been  in  vain.  But,  note  this, 
the   efficacy   of   the   seventh   day's   assault   depended 


i8o  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

upon,  and  included  In  itself,  that  of  all  the  preceding 
days.  It  was  the  seventh  blow  of  the  hammer  that 
split  the  stone;  but  that  blow  did  it,  because  it  was 
the  seventh.  And  it  is  so  in  almost  every  good  work 
and  noble  enterprise.  All  that  is  done  for  a  long  time 
may  appear  to  be  but  lost  labour.  Yet  it  all  tells  on 
the  final  result,  and  is  all  indispensable  to  it.  Un- 
successful to  all  superficial  estimation,  it  is  laying 
the  unseen  substructures  of  a  great  and  apparently 
sudden  triumph,  when  almost  in  a  moment  God's 
harvesters  reap  the  fruit  of  long  dim  years  or  decades 
or  even  centuries.  Take  for  example  an  epoch  like 
the  Reformation.  It  seemed  to  come  on  the  world 
like  a  thunder-clap.  A  man  called  Martin  Luther  was 
sent  from  God — and  the  face  of  the  world  was 
changed.  But  the  result  which  seemed  so  sudden  was 
not  sudden.  As  we  now  see  more  clearly  it  was  only 
a  culmination;  Luther  only  applied  the  igniting  spark 
to  a  train  which  had  been  laid  during  a  long  period 
of  obscure  and  silent  preparation. 

The  whole  history  of  the  world  is  witness  to  this 
truth.  The  whole  spiritual  movement  of  the  world 
has  gone  forward  by  periods  of  preparation,  during 
which  the  forces  of  progress  were  silently  gathering 
strength,  accumulating  even  in  times  of  apparent 
reaction  and  disaster,  and  which  at  last  came  to  a 
head  and  burst  forth  in  the  sudden  and  glorious  birth 
of  a  new  era.  As  when  the  tide  is  rising,  wave  after 
wave  flows  in  only  to  ripple  and  break  upon  the  beach, 
so  countless  waves  of  effort  and  prayer  and  sacrifice 
for  the  Kingdom  of  God  spend  themselves  and  dis- 
appear on  the  shore  of  time.     Nevertheless  the  tide 


THE  FALL  OF  JERICHO  i8i 

rises;  it  floods  one  little  creek  and  conquers  one  spit 
of  sand  after  another;  and  at  last  one  wave,  riding  on 
the  shoulders  of  its  forerunners,  surmounts  the  bar, 
and  the  great  ocean  pours  into  the  black,  oozy  har- 
bour. So  shall  the  earth  be  filled  with  the  knowledge 
of  the  Lord.  Or,  as  the  snows  gather  upon  the  brow 
of  the  alp  with  soft  and  silent  fall,  and  day  by  day 
through  the  long  months  of  winter  the  fleecy  showers 
still  descend,  and  still  the  snow  deepens  and  gathers, 
and  still  all  is  at  peace  and  the;  village  slumbers  beneath 
the  crag;  until  one  day  a  last  flake  falls  and  the  great 
white  mass,  overweighted,  slips  from  its  hold  and  the 
avalanche  is  started  on  its  awful  career,  so  with  an 
avalanche  not  of  destruction  but  of  blessing  do  the 
great  epochs  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  come.  The  forces 
of  that  Kingdom,  generated  by  the  prayers  and  labours 
and  sacrifices  of  obscure  people  and  undistinguished 
years,  gather  behind  the  barrier,  unseen  by  the  eye 
and  unguessed  by  the  thought  of  man,  until  at  last  the 
flood-gates  are  opened,  and  suddenly  some  great  work 
is  done,  some  ancient  fabric  of  falsehood  or  evil  is 
swept  away. 

So  we  set  ourselves  to  the  capture  of  some  Jericho. 
We  send  out  missionaries  to  India  or  China  to  convert 
the  heathen.  And  after  a  little  the  mutter  of  dis- 
content and  disparagement  is  heard,  or  a  feeling  of 
apathy  and  disappointment  succeeds  to  the  first  en- 
thusiasm. The  progress  is  wofully  slow;  there  is 
scarcely  progress  at  all;  there  are  individual  converts 
here  and  there,  and  persons  with  a  head  for  figures 
calculate  how  much  they  cost  apiece.  But  seemingly 
no  impression  is  being  made  on  the  great  systems  of 


i82  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

heathenism,  and  if  missionary  enterprise  is  ever  to  be 
successful  on  a  grand  scale,  why  should  it  not  show  now 
some  promise  of  being  so?  So  our  impatience  argues. 
But  what  if  all  these  our  years  of  work  in  India,  for 
example,  are  but  the  first  day  of  our  marching  around 
Jericho,  or  the  second?  or  what  if  it  be  already  the 
sixth  or  the  seventh?  God  does  not  publish  his  calen- 
dar.    Of  these  times  and  seasons  knoweth  no  man. 

I  recall  an  incident  in  the  early  annals  of  the  London 
Missionary  Society.  That  society  had  sent  out  no 
fewer  than  twenty-five  missionaries  to  begin  work  in 
Tahiti  and  the  Friendly  Islands.  Sixteen  years  of 
labour  were  spent  to  all  appearance  in  vain.  There 
had  been  no  promise  even  of  result;  no  streak  of 
light,  no  presage  of  dawn  had  broken  the  night  of 
heathenism.  Not  a  single  conversion;  no  manifesta- 
tion of  interest;  no  spirit  of  inquiry.  Discouraged  by 
the  continued  failure  of  the  mission,  and  the  un- 
hopeful prospect,  the  directors  of  the  society  had 
seriously  contemplated  its  abandonment.  But  better 
counsels  prevailed.  A  season  of  special  prayer  was 
determined  upon,  and  a  reinforcement  of  workers 
along  with  letters  of  encouragement,  was  sent  out. 
Now  mark  this :  the  vessel  carrying  these  recruits  and 
these  letters  was  passed  in  mid-ocean  by  another  home- 
ward bound  from  Tahiti,  carrying  to  England — not 
only  the  tidings  of  the  entire  overthrow  of  idolatry  in 
that  island,  but  the  trophies  of  the  victory,  the  de- 
throned and  rejected  idols  themselves.  So  suddenly 
did  the  Lord  of  the  vineyard  in  the  South  Seas  pay 
to  His  labourers  the  arrears  due  to  sixteen  years 
of    apparently    unrewarded    and    fruitless    toil,    and 


THE  FALL  OF  JERICHO  183 

with  such  interest  as  the  most  sanguine  had  never 
dreamt  of. 

God  pays  all  such  arrears.  He  does  not  publish 
his  calendar,  I  say;  but  the  seventh  day  will  always 
come,  and  it  will  pay  for  the  whole  long  week.  We 
may  ourselves  be  living  on  the  eve  of  some  great  day 
of  the  Lord.  We  cannot  know  but  before  any  year 
ends  we  may  see  some  great  purpose  of  Providence 
fulfilled,  the  death-blow  given  to  some  long-lived  evil, 
the  sudden  dawn  of  some  new  and  brighter  day  in 
the  world's  and  the  Church's  history.  Whether  it 
come  soon  or  late,  it  will  always  come.  But,  let  us 
remember,  the  way  for  every  triumph  is  paved  by  the 
patient,  plodding  effort  of  every  day  and  of  all  the 
years  as  they  pass.  Prepare  ye  the  way  of  the  Lord; 
when  the  way  is  prepared  the  Lord  will  come, 

The   Judge   that   comes   in   mercy, 
The  Judge  that  comes  with  might, 
To  terminate  the  evil, 
To  diadem  the  right. 

"By  faith  the  walls  of  Jericho  fell,  being  compassed 
about  seven  days."  The  Duke  of  Wellington  always 
ascribed  his  victories  to  his  men;  but,  when  asked 
whether  the  British  soldier  was  braver  than  the  soldiers 
of  other  nations,  he  said :  "No,  the  British  soldier  was 
no  braver  than  others,  but  he  could  be  depended  on  to  be 
brave  for  just  fifteen  minutes  longer  than  the  others." 
In  all  the  great  battles  of  life  it  is  this  that  turns  the 
scale.  It  is  not  enough  to  be  brave ;  you  must  be  brave 
a  little  longer  than  your  antagonist.  Soldiers  of  Christ, 
in  the  holy  warfare  of  our  own  lives   and   in  the 


i84  THE  GRAND  ADVfiNTURE 

warfare  of  the  Kingdom,  we  ought  to  be  braver  than 
others,  and  above  all  we  must  be  brave  longer  than 
they.  We  must  fulfil  the  seven  days.  We  must  win 
the  reward  of  cumulative  effort.  Let  ours  be  the 
faith  that  rests  upon  the  Everlasting  and  doubts  not; 
let  ours  be  the  zeal  that  works  with  both  hands  ear- 
nestly; let  ours  be  the  persistence  which  endures  to  the 
end.  By  faith  our  Jericho  shall  fall,  being  compassed 
about  seven  days. 


XV 
Cain  and  Christ 

Gen.  4:  1-8;  I  John  3:  10-16. 

Though  there  was  no  song  of  angels  when  Cain 
came  into  the  world  there  was  song  in  a  woman's 
heart.  His  mother  called  him  Cain,  because  (she 
said)  I  have  gotten  a  man  from  the  Lord.  Yes!  a 
man,  a  new  man,  a  man  from  the  Lord ;  and  with  this 
new  copy  of  God's  image  lying  in  her  arms  she  said, 
like  the  mother  of  Christ,  My  soul  doth  magnify  the 
Lord.  Like  Mary !  We  have  called  Mary  the  Mother 
of  Sorrows,  but  surely  the  title  better  befits  the  mother 
of  Cain  than  the  mother  of  Christ.  Eve  thought  that 
Cain  was  Christ;  that  the  babe  God  had  sent  her  was 
the  seed  of  the  woman  that  should  bruise  the  serpent's 
head.  Many  a  son  has  trampled  a  mother's  hopes  into 
the  mire,  but  none  ever  trampled  upon  such  a  hope  as 
Cain.  For  Cain  was  not  the  Christ;  he  is  the  typical 
opposite  of  Christ — "Cain,  who  was  of  that  *wicked 
one,  and  slew  his  brother."  That  is  why  the  Apostle 
John  brings  him  into  his  Epistle.  It  is  to  set  Cain 
over  against  the  glory  of  Christ.  Cain  the  murderer, 
Christ  the  Saviour;  Cain  the  incarnation  of  selfishness 
and  hate,  Christ  the  incarnation  of  God  who  is  love — 
these  two  are  our  Elder  Brothers,  so  to  say,  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  two  great  camps  into  which  mankind 
is  divided  and  of  the  two  powers  which  struggle  for 

185 


i86  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

the  empire  of  the  world  and  of  every  human  life. 
''Cain  or  Christ/'  the  apostle  seems  to  say;  "consider 
whether  this  spirit  rules  your  life  or  that,  whether 
you  are  of  the  tribe  of  Cain  or  belong  to  the  holy 
family  of  Christ." 

"Not  as  Cain,  who  was  of  that  wicked  one,  and  slew 
his  brother."  But,  one  is  tempted  to  ask,  does  not  the 
apostle  speak  here  in  a  violently  exaggerated  strain? 
What  has  Cain  in  common  with  ordinary,  average 
humanity?  He  was  a  murderer,  a  monster  of  flagrant 
wickedness.  He  killed  his  brother.  His  sin  cried  to 
heaven.  Seldom,  even  among  the  criminal  classes,  will 
one  be  found  whose  soul  is  so  set  on  fire  with  the  worst 
passions  of,  hell. 

But  let  us  hearken  to  what  follows.  "Whosoever 
hateth  his  brother."  This  seems  more  relevant.  The 
shells  no  longer  fly  harmlessly  over  our  heads ;  we  are 
in  the  danger  zone.  "Whosoever  hateth  his  brother" — 
well,  what  of  him? — "is  a  murderer."  But  again  you 
may  say  this  is  the  language  of  exaggeration.  It  will 
be  expedient,  at  any  rate,  before  we  commit  ourselves  to 
acceptance  of  it,  to  be  clear  as  to  what  is  meant. 

Hate,  like  love,  is  a  word  which  is  used  in  a  wide 
variety  of  senses.  We  sometimes  speak  of  "hating"  a 
person  or  thing  when  we  mean  no  more  than  strong 
dislike,  the  feeling  of  something  intensely  distasteful 
or  uncongenial.  But  dislike  is  not  hate.  We  are  under 
no  moral  obligation  to  like  anyone;  for  liking  is  a 
matter,  not  of  choice,  but  of  nature. 

I  do  not  like  thee,  Dr.  Fell; 
The  reason  why,  I  cannot  tell, 
But,  I  do  not  like  thee,  Dr.  Fell. 


CAIN  AND  CHRIST  187 

But  because  we  do  not  and  cannot  like  the  Doctor,  we 
do  not  necessarily  hate  him.  The  very  core  of  Chris- 
tian ethics,  it  has  been  said,  is  learning  to  love  persons 
whom  we  do  not  like.  Yet,  without  love,  dislike  will 
always  deepen  into  hate;  and  if  you  were,  let  us  say,  an 
Oriental  tyrant,  you  would  need  no  other  reason  for 
extinguishing  a  man,  any  more  than  for  crushing  a 
mosquito,  than  simply  that  he  aroused  in  you  a  feeling 
of  strong  dislike.^ 

Again,  people  say  that  they  "hate"  a  person,  mean- 
ing thereby  indignation  against  him  as  an  evil-doer, 
passionate  repudiation  of  the  man  and  his  deeds.  But 
indignation  is  not  hatred,  although  again,  when  love 
is  absent,  it  is  sure  to  degenerate  into  hatred  and  sheer 
vindictiveness.  Nor,  again,  is  the  spirit  of  rivalry 
hatred.  Rivalry  may  be  entirely  generous.  It  is  the 
essence  of  good  sportsmanship,  as  we  say,  to  bear  no 
ill-will  to  another  who  is  exerting  his  powers  in  rivalry 
with  oneself,  and  to  feel  no  bitterness  if  he  prove  him- 
self the  better  man.  The  principle  of  rivalry  is  rooted 
in  the  very  constitution  of  nature  and  could  not  be  elim- 
inated from  society  without  disaster.  But,  again,  where 
love  and  goodwill  are  absent,  rivalry  does  inevitably 
breed  hatred.  Hatred  in  the  true  sense  is  ill-will,  the 
malevolent  disposition,  the  desire  to  inflict  injury  and 
the  delight  in  the  infliction  of  pain  or  humiliation  upon 
another;  and  St.  John  always  goes  on  the  assumption 
that  either  we  must  love  men  or  we  shall  hate  them. 
And  that  is  the  truth  of  the  matter.  It  may  appear  that 
to  the  majority  of  persons  our  attitude  may  be  one  of 


^Read  Browning's  Instans  Tyrannus. 


1 88  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

simple  indifference;  but  indifference,  like  neutrality  in 
war,  is  possible  only  while  other  lives  with  their  inter- 
ests and  claims  do  not  touch  ours.  Just  as  the  chemical 
constituents  of  gunpowder  may  be  said  to  be  indifferent 
to  each  other  until  the  igniting  spark  falls  upon  them, 
so  is  it  with  our  relations  to  our  fellowmen.  The 
potentialities  of  love  and  hate  are  always  present  in 
them.  Let  any  man  in  Toronto,  towards  whom  your 
feelings  are  an  absolute  blank,  be  preferred  to  a  situa- 
tion or  an  honour  to  which  you  consider  you  have  a 
superior  claim — will  he  be  an  object  of  indifference  to 
you  then?  The  apostle  is  profoundly  right  in  his 
psychology.  If  we  have  not  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  that 
of  Cain  may  be  slumbering  within  us;  but  it  is  only 
slumbering.  Conflicting  interests  and  natural  antip- 
athies will  evoke  actual  malevolence,  will  make  us 
hate. 

But  St.  John  proceeds  with  his  sharp-pointed  sen- 
tence, "Whosoever  hateth  his  brother  is  a  murderer." 
Shakespeare  is  his  echo :  "Hates  any  man  the  thing  he 
would  not  kill?"  Still,  in  spite  of  both,  is  this  verdict 
sound?  Certainly  there  are  a  vast  number  of  persons 
who  hate,  who  have  a  pronounced  and  fixed  ill-will 
towards  some  fellowman,  but  with  whom  the  desire 
or  even  the  idea  of  slaying  the  object  of  their  hate  is 
unconceived  and  inconceivable.  Yet  St.  John  and 
Shakespeare  truly  diagnose  the  case.  Hate  is  ill-will; 
and  murder  is  ill-will  carried  to  the  extreme  of  action. 
One  case  of  small-pox  may  be  more  virulent  than  an- 
other case,  but  both  are  cases  of  small-pox;  and  hate 
differs  from  murder  only  as  a  milder  differs  from  a 
more  virulent  attack  of  the  same  disease,  only  as  a 


CAIN  AND  CHRIST  189 

maniac  under  restraint  differs  from  a  maniac  running 
amuck.  Let  hate  loose;  release  it  from  the  restraint 
of  circumstances,  of  conventional  ideas,  of  the  sensi- 
bilities of  civilised  man  to  which  violence  and  blood- 
shed are  repulsive;  let  hate  act  out  its  impulse  spon- 
taneously and  freely,  and  it  infallibly  would,  as  it 
does  with  the  savage  or  the  irresponsible  tyrant,  kill. 
Hatred,  ill-will,  is  the  capital  offence  in  the  spiritual 
kingdom,  as  murder,  ill-will  become  ill-doing,  is  in  the 
kingdoms  of  this  world. 

''Whosoever  hateth."  ^Some  one  has  said  that  he 
thanked  God  for  the  "whosoevers"  of  the  Bible.  It  is 
a  widehearted  word,  with  a  smile  and  a  welcome  for 
everyone.  It  is  the  "crook  by  which  the  Good  Shepherd 
feels  for,  and  finds,  and  draws  to  himself  his  wandering 
sheep.'*  "Whosoever  believeth  in  him  shall  not  perish, 
but  have  everlasting  life."  "Whosoever  will,  let  him 
come  and  take  of  the  water  of  life  freely."  But  here 
it  is  a  fearsome  word.  It  is  "an  officer  bearing  the 
king's  warrant  for  the  arrest  of  offenders."  And  this 
writ  runs  everywhere.  It  searches  not  only  the  dens 
of  vice,  the  squalid  purlieus  where  oaths  and  blows 
resound.  It  comes  into  our  homes  and  our  places  of 
business,  into  our  politics  and  public  assemblies  and 
into  our  private  thoughts ;  it  comes  into  the  midst  of  us 
here,  into  the  pew  and  up  into  the  pulpit,  saying,  "Who 
is  he  that  hateth  his  brother  ?  Let  him  come  and  stand 
in  the  dock  side  by  side  with  Cain,  his  elder  brother." 

But  the  most  appalling  thing  about  Cain  is  not  that 


I  am  indebted  in  this  paragraph  to  Dr.  Gibbon's  fine  exposi- 

1   of  KirQt    Tnhn     n    74. 


tion  of  First  John,  p.  74 


I90  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

he  hated  and  slew  his  brother;  it  is  the  reason  for  his 
doing  so.  ''And  wherefore  slew  he  him?"  Incredible 
as  it  may  appear,  it  was  '^because  his  own  works  were 
evil,  and  his  brother's  righteous."  One  cannot  con- 
ceive a  sentence  which  sheds  a  more  awful  light  than 
this  upon  the  evil  possibilities  of  the  human  heart. 
His  brother's  works  were  righteous;  therefore  with 
good  reason  Cain  loved  and  honoured  his  brother, 
praised  and  encouraged  him  in  well-doing,  unfeignedly 
rejoiced  that,  however  far  he  himself  fell  short,  his 
brother  at  least  was  taking  the  high  and  noble  way? 
Instead  of  this,  he  hated  and  slew  him — hated  and 
slew  him  because  his  own  works  were  evil  and  his 
brother's  righteous.  How  truly  preposterous  a  reason ! 
How  diabolical  the  heart  it  reveals — the  envious  heart 
that  "withers  at  another's  joy,  and  hates  the  excellence 
it  cannot  reach."  I  beg  of  you  to  look  at  Envy  as  you 
see  it  in  that  vivid  sentence :  "And  wherefore  slew  he 
him?  Because  his  own  works  were  evil  and  his 
brother's  righteous."  If  we  did  not  know  envy  as  a 
fact  and  an  experience  we  should  pronounce  it  an 
impossibility,  a  horror  belonging  to  some  grotesque 
nightmare-world,  and  to  no  real  world  at  all.  That 
one  man  can  actually  hate  another  for  being  better 
than  himself,  or  more  talented,  more  useful  or  success- 
ful— to  the  angels,  I  imagine,  this  must  be  actually 
unintelligible.  And  yet  what  makes  this  mystery  of 
iniquity  possible  is  a  thing  which  in  itself  is  not  only 
innocent  and  good,  but  fundamental  to  our  moral 
nature — self-love.  Self-love  is  one  of  the  pillars  of 
manhood.  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself." 
If  we  did  not  love  ourselves  it  is  certain  that  we  could 


CAIN  AND  CHRIST  191 

not  love  any  other  person.  But,  as  one  of  our  great 
teachers  has  said,  the  whole  misery  and  ruin  of  our 
sinful  state  is  that  self-love  has  taken  in  addition  to 
its  own  place  the  place  of  love  to  God  and  to  our 
brother  also.  Self-love  is  not  hate;  but  without  love, 
it  has  in  it  all  the  materials  of  hate.  So  it  was  with 
Cain.  His  brother's  manifest  superiority  was  too  cruel 
a  wound  to  his  passionate  pride  in  himself;  it  bred  in 
him  a  sullen  envy,  and  at  last  goaded  him  to  madness. 
And  if  the  spirit  of  Christ  has  not  conquered  the 
spirit  of  Cain  in  you,  you  naturally  hate  the  rival 
who  shines  with  a  brighter  light  in  the  world  than 
yours,  who  in  any  way  puts  you  in  the  shade,  and  hurts 
your  self-esteem.  Your  jealous  self-love,  like  Cain's, 
leaps  out  like  a  sword  from  its  scabbard. 

Brethren,  I  bid  you  again  look  at  envy  in  the  person 
of  Cain.  There  are  sins  which  are  due  to  weakness 
of  the  flesh.  We  are  liable  to  them  because  we  dwell 
in  bodies  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  are  overcome  by  their 
appetites  or  shrink  from  their  pains.  We  would  not 
be  liable  to  these  sins  if  we  were  freed  from  this  cor- 
ruptible body ;  and  we  shall  be  no  more  tempted  to  them 
when  this  corruptible  shall  have  put  on  incorruption. 
But  envy  needs  no  bodily  organ.  Envy  is  pure  devil. 
Heaven  itself  could  not  cure  envy.  There  envy  still 
would 

Knit  its  frown 
At  one  who  wore  a  brighter  crown. 

There  is  nothing  that  ought  to  make  every  man,  and 
that  does  make  every  truly  sane  and  good  man  more 
deeply  ashamed  of  his  character  than  an  uprising  of 
envy  in  his  heart,  nothing  that  will  give  more  poignant 


192  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

reality  to  the  prayer,  "Create  in  me  a  clean  heart,  O 
God."  But  be  of  good  cheer,  you  who  feel  the  shame 
of  it  and  stamp  upon  its  viperous  head.  In  you  the 
divine  impulse  is  at  work,  and  the  strong  man  armed 
must  yield  to  the  strongest. 

For  this  bane  of  human  life  there  is  an  antidote, 
only  one.  The  Cain  in  us  must  be  extirpated  by  the 
Christ  in  us.  As  virtues  are  best  illustrated  by  their 
contraries,  the  apostle  has  introduced  here  this  gloomy, 
sinister  figure  of  Cain  only  as  a  foil  to  another,  the 
fairest  and  best  of  all.  We  are  now  away  from  the 
gates  of  Eden;  we  are  outside  the  walls  of  Jerusalem. 
It  is  not  Abel  who  is  being  killed;  it  is  Christ,  Christ 
who  is  laying  down  His  life  for  the  men  who  hated 
and  mocked  and  slew  Him.  Instead  of  the  mystery  of 
envious  hate  we  gaze  upon  the  mystery  of  self-for- 
getting love.  How  amazing  are  both — Cain  who 
offered  his  brother  a  victim  to  his  enraged  and  rampant 
self-love,  Christ  who  offered  Himself  as  love's  sacrifice 
to  others*  needs;  Cain  who  slew  his  brother  because 
his  own  works  were  evil  and  his  brother's  righteous, 
Christ  whose  own  works  were  righteous,  but  who  took 
on  Him  the  burden  and  the  shame  of  His  brothers'  evil 
deeds,  and  cried,  "Father,  forgive  them!"  "Herein," 
says  St.  John,  "know  we  love."  Here  we  recognize 
its  nature,  its  purest  essence — not  in  the  idyUic  loves 
of  Jacob  and  Rachel,  or  the  romantic  friendship  of 
David  and  Jonathan,  not  in  the  tender  affection  of 
parent  and  child,  but  in  this,  that  Jesus  Christ  laid 
down  His  life  for  us,  not  a  day  or  a  year  of  His  life, 
but  all  the  years  and  all  the  days  and  all  the  strength 
and  all  the  gifts  of  it,  all  that  Jesus  could  have  made 


CAIN  AND  CHRIST  193 

of  that  life  for  His  own  pleasure  and  glory — laid  it  all 
down  with  a  patience  that  never  faltered,  a  self-sacrifice 
that  knew  no  limit.  This,  this  pure,  spontaneous,  self- 
begotten,  entire  devotion  of  Jesus  Christ  to  men  who 
hated  Him  without  a  cause  is  Love — "Love  divine,  all 
loves  excelling." 

Once  more  look  on  this  picture  and  on  that:  Cain 
who  glutted  his  devouring  self-love  in  a  brother's 
blood,  Christ  who  could  appease  the  yearnings  of  His 
heart  only  by  pouring  out  His  life  for  His  brethren. 
Know  that  in  the  one  or  the  other  of  these  we  see  our 
spiritual  affinity.  Our  souls  are  stamped  with  the 
family-likeness  of  Cain  or  with  that  of  Christ.  There 
is  no  third  class  to  which  we  can  belong.  There  are 
all  shades,  degrees  and  differences  within  each  class; 
but  these  are  the  two  radical  types,  the  formative 
principles,  the  opposite  powers  that  have  always  mani- 
fested themselves  in  human  history  and  that  to-day  are 
contending  for  the  mastery  of  the  world  and  of  human 
life.  The  spirit  of  Cain  is  abroad  in  the  world  to-day. 
It  is  the  spirit  of  all  the  men  who  seek  to  become  rich 
at  the  expense  of  others  less  shrewd  or  less  advan- 
tageously situated  than  themselves,  or  to  become  strong 
by  trampling  upon  the  weak;  of  all  men  who  pursue 
their  pleasure  at  the  expense  of  others'  happiness,  at 
the  cost  of  other  men's  or  women's  bodies  or  souls. 
It  is  the  spirit  which  alienates  man  from  man,  which 
evokes  mutual  jealousies,  which  sows  the  seeds  of 
enmity  between  Labour  and  Capital,  which  keeps  the 
nations  armed  to  the  teeth  in  mutual  fear  and  makes 
what  we  call  *'peace"  only  potential  war,  which  begets 
and  propagates  the  baneful   falsehood  of  conflicting 


194  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

interests  between  man  and  man,  class  and  class,  nation 
and  nation.^  But,  thanks  be  to  God !  the  Christ-spirit 
is  also  abroad  in  the  world.  It  is  the  spirit  of  all  men 
who  have  learned  the  Divine  secret,  that  it  is  more 
blessed  to  enrich  others  at  one's  own  expense  than  one- 
self at  theirs,  of  all  men  who  seek  and  find  their  joy 
in  giving  others  joy,  who  seek  to  be  great  only  in 
service,  and  desire,  like  Christ,  to  minister  rather  than 
to  be  ministered  unto ;  yes,  and  are  ready  even  to  suffer 
with  Him  who  gave  His  life  a  ransom  for  many.  The 
question  is.  On  which  side  are  you  and  I?  There  is 
no  question  on  which  side  final  victory  lies.  Christ  is 
stronger  than  Cain;  notwithstanding  all  appearances 
to  the  contrary,  the  Christ  spirit  is  winning  the  day. 
Life  is  ever  lord  of  Death;  and  Love  can  never  lose  its 
own.  The  crucial  question,  the  great  choice  in  its 
ultimate,  plainest  terms  is  this — Cain  or  Christ  ?  There 
is  much  wrangling  about  religion  to-day;  many  things 
are  questioned  or  denied,  and  God  has  left  many  things 
in  doubt.  But  one  thing  God  leaves  in  no  doubt  at 
all — the  Heavenly  Vision.  It  is  impossible  to  doubt 
for  a  single  moment  that  in  Christ  we  see  the  Spirit 
of  the  Highest. 

If  Jesus  Christ  is  a  man, 

And  only  a  man,  I  say, 

That  of  all  mankind  I  cleave  to  him 

And  to  him  will  cleave  alway. 

Young  men,  do  you  say  that? — I  will  take  Christ  as 
my  ideal,  and  to  him  I  will  cleave  alway.    That  is  not 


^This  sermon  belongs  to  the  days  before  the  war.    I  leave  it 

as  it  was  written. 


CAIN  AND  CHRIST  195 

full  Christianity,  but  it  is  the  first  step  to  it.  If  you 
take  that  step,  you  will  be  necessitated  to  take  another. 

But  if  Jesus  Christ  is  God, 

And  the  only  God,  I  swear, 

I  will  follow  him  through  heaven  and  hell, 

The  earth,  the  sea,  the  air. 

You  will  find  that  with  the  Ideal  Man  you  need  the 
Living  God  to  be  your  strength  and  your  redeemer; 
and  you  will  find  the  Living  God  revealed  and  present 
to  your  need  only  in  Christ.  Young  men,  I  do  not 
vastly  long  for  you  to  be  orthodox  Presbyterians,  but 
my  heart's  desire  for  you  is  that  you  be  Christ's  men. 
The  world  is  calling  for  the  higher  manhood,  the 
manhood  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  "manifestation  of  the 
sons  of  God."  Your  own  souls  are  made  and  are  cry- 
ing for  it.  Stand  boldly  forth  for  Christ  as  against 
Cain,  first  in  yourselves,  then  in  the  world.  Remember 
that  this  means  not  a  hasty  profession,  not  a  merely 
sentimental  response  to  an  entrancing  ideal,  but  living 
a  life.  It  means  following  Christ  not  through  heaven 
or  hell,  but  where  God  calls  you  and  sends  you  to 
serve.  God  is  Love.  "Herein  know  we  love,  that  He 
laid  down  his  life  for  us.  My  little  children,  let  us 
love  not  in  word,  neither  in  tongue,  but  in  deed  and  in 
truth;  and  hereby  we  shall  know  that  we  are  of  the 
truth,  and  shall  assure  our  hearts  before  Him." 


XVI 
The  Blood  of  Abel  and  the  Blood  of  Christ 

The  voice  of  thy  brother's  blood  crieth  unto  me  from  the 
ground. — Gen.  4:  10. 

The  blood  of  sprinkling,  that  speaketh  better  things  than  that 
of  Abel. — Heb.  12:  24. 

Last  Lord's  Day  I  took  the  Apostle  John  as  our 
commentator  on  this  old-world  narrative;  and  he  led 
us  into  the  heart  of  its  teaching,  showing  us  the  op- 
posite poles  of  the  moral  kingdom  in  the  envious, 
murderous  hate  of  Cain  and  the  seff -sacrificing  love  of 
Christ.  This  morning  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  shall  perform  for  us  a  similar  office.  Not 
less  impressive  than  St.  John's  is  the  use  he  makes 
of  this  ancient  story,  when  at  the  very  heart  of  all  the 
glories  of  the  Gospel,  in  the  innermost  shrine,  he  points 
us  to  *'the  blood  of  sprinkling,  that  speaketh  better 
things  than  that  of  Abel."  What  was  it  that  the  blood 
of  Abel  spoke?  And  what  are  the  better  things  the 
blood  of  Christ  speaks? 

God  said  to  Cain,  "The  voice  of  thy  brother's  blood 
crieth  unto  me  from  the  ground";  and  Cain  did  not 
need  to  have  it  told  him  what  that  blood  was  crying 
for.  Observe  that  it  was  "the  voice  of  thy  brother's 
blood."  Abel  did  not  cry  for  vengeance.  Abel,  had  he 
been  permitted  to  speak,  would  have  pleaded  every 
reason  why  mercy  should  rejoice  against  judgment. 

196 


THE  BLOOD  OF  ABEL  AND  CHRIST    197 

"Poor,  pitiable  Cain !"  he  would  have  said,  "it  was  hard 
for  him  to  see  his  younger  brother  preferred  before 
him.  I  know  not  whether,  if  so  tempted,  I  might  not 
have  show^n  myself  as  envious  as  he."  Abel  would  have 
suspected  something  far  amiss  in  himself  that  made 
him  to  be  such  an  offence  and  stumbling-block  to  his 
brother.  He  had  rejoiced  too  inconsiderately  and  with 
too  little  fellow-feeling  for  his  brother's  chagrin,  when 
his  own  offering  was  accepted  and  Cain's  despised. 
Yes,  we  may  be  sure  that  as  he  passed  into  the  presence 
of  the  Judge,  Abel  said,  "Father,  forgive  my  brother; 
he  was  mad,  blind  with  passion;  he  knew  not  what 
he  did." 

But — here  is  the  terrible  thing — while  Abel  forgives, 
his  blood  w^ill  not  forgive.  Abel  could  not  silence  his 
own  accusing  blood;  he  could  not  stop  the  wheels  of 
Cain's  destiny.  And  this  dread  truth  is  often  repeated 
in  the  Bible,  and  in  the  same  terms.  "When  he  maketh 
inquisition  for  blood,"  says  the  Psalmist,  "he  re- 
membereth  them:  he  forgetteth  not  the  cry  of  the 
humble."  The  "humble"  do  not  cry  for  vengeance 
in  the  day  of  inquisition,  but  their  blood  is  clamorous. 
No  one  has  made  sterner  proclamation  of  it  than  our 
Lord  Himself,  when  He  declared  that  the  blood  of  all 
the  prophets  which  had  been  shed  from  the  foundation 
of  the  world,  from  the  blood  of  Abel  onward,  would 
be  required  of  that  impenitent  generation.  Then  there 
is  that  remarkable  passage  in  the  Book  of  Revelation, 
where  the  seer  beholds  under  the  altar  the  souls  of  the 
martyrs ;  which  cried  with  a  loud  voice,  saying,  "How 
long,  O  Lord,  holy  and  true,  dost  thou  not  judge 
and  avenge  our  blood  on  them  that  dwell  on  the  earth?" 


198  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

Do  the  holy  martyrs  in  paradise  thirst  for  vengeance? 
Do  they  impatiently  urge  and  importune  the  Lord  of 
Hosts  to  gird  His  sword  upon  His  thigh  ?  A  thousand 
times,  no!  Yet  they  cannot  help  doing  it.  Their 
blood,  the  very  presence  before  God  of  those  tortured 
and  slaughtered  saints,  cries  to  Him  for  righteous 
vengeance. 

God  set  a  mark  upon  Cain,  we  read;  and  com- 
mentators have  been  much  exercised  as  to  what  this 
mark  may  have  been.  Let  me  tell  you  what  it  was. 
It  was  this  God  wrote  on  Cain's  brow,  "Vengeance  is 
mine;  I  will  repay,  saith  the  Lord."  It  was  the  mark 
one  has  seen  on  other  brows  than  Cain's,  the  mark 
which  proclaims  so  visibly  that  God  has  taken  a 
man  into  His  own  terrible  hands  for  punishment,  that 
at  the  sight  the  claims  of  human  justice  are  silent,  and 
indignation  against  the  wrong-doer  becomes  solemn 
pity  for  the  victim  of  his  own  wrongdoing. 

A  belief  in  divine  retribution,  retribution  greater 
and  more  inescapable  than  man's,  is  one  of  the  most 
universal  and  irresistible  of  our  moral  instincts.  It 
has  often  been  expressed  in  crudely  superstitious  forms 
— haunting  ghosts,  avenging  furies  with  snaky  tresses 
that  chase  the  wrong-doer  to  his  doom — ^but  beneath 
these  very  superstitions  there  lies  the  truth,  which 
every  man  in  his  soul  knows  to  be  true,  of  a  divine 
Nemesis  that  follows  wrongdoing,  that  cannot  be 
eluded,  cannot  be  turned  aside  or  baffled  in  its  pursuit. 
Vengeance  is  a  terrible  word,  always.  On  the  lips  of 
those  who  thirst  for  it  and  gloat  over  it,  it  is  a  hor- 
rible, a  fiendish  word.  But  it  is  also  a  holy  word,  a 
divine  word.     Vengeance  is  the  joy  only  of  a  devil; 


THE  BLOOD  OF  ABEL  AND  CHRIST    199 

but  it  is  the  infinitely  sad  yet  holy  necessity  of  a 
Righteous  God,  His  work,  though  His  strange  work. 

And  this  is  a  truth  which  needs  to  be  emphasized, 
because  it  is  not  popular  with  us  to-day.  The  feeling 
of  the  present  age — perhaps  one  should  say,  the  present 
hour — sets  strongly  against  all  conceptions  of  retri- 
bution.^ We  seem  to  think  not  that  wrong  is  the 
greatest  of  evils,  but  that  pain  is.  We  seem  to  have 
acquired  Christ's  compassionate  recoil  from  the  suf- 
fering that  vexes  and  darkens  human  life,  but  to  have 
closed  our  eyes  to  that  principle  of  righteousness  which 
also  asserts  itself  so  powerfully  in  Christ's  spirit  and 
teaching.  There  is  a  sentiment  abroad  which  will 
scarcely  allow  such  a  word  as  wrath,  and  would  have 
the  violation  of  the  laws  of  God  and  man  to  be  con- 
doned and  glossed  over.  The  God  many  people  want 
is  just  an  amiable,  good-natured  deity,  who  is  ready 
to  find  an  excuse  for  everybody  and  everything.  They 
may  not  say  with  Omar  Khayyam,  "Tush!  He's  a 
good  fellow,  and  'twill  all  be  well,"  or  with  Heine, 
"God  will  forgive,  it  is  his  trade" :  but  "Tell  us,"  they 
say  to  the  preacher,  "tell  us  about  the  Infinite  Pity 
that  enfolds  all  in  its  embrace.  Magnify  the  gentle- 
ness and  tenderness  of  Christ,  and  minimize  that  other 
side,  if  you  cannot  altogether  abolish  it.  It  is  not  in 
accordance  with  the  tendencies  of  modern  thought." 
Well,  it  may  not  be;  but  it  is  in  accordance  with  the 
eternal  truth  and  the  unchangeable  nature  of  things. 


^This  utterance  belongs  to  the  days  before  the  war,  before  the 
Belgian  and  Armenian  atrocities,  before  German  and  Turk  had 
soaked  the  earth  with  innocent  blood.  Shares  in  heaven-and-hell 
amalgamation  societies  are  now  at  a  discount. 


200  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

God  is  Love.  That  is  the  light  and  glory  of  the 
Gospel.  But  love  has  many  facets,  and  one  of  them 
is  righteousness.  Love  is  not  the  easy  good-nature 
that  will  tolerate  wrong  rather  than  inflict  pain.  "Unto 
thee,  O  Lord,  belongeth  mercy:  for  thou  renderest  to 
every  man  according  to  his  work."  Justice  is  in  the 
end  the  true  mercy.  Think  what  would  be  the  state  of 
the  world,  of  the  universe,  if  God  looked  with  the  same 
amiable  complacency  upon  the  evil  and  the  good, 
showed  Himself  the  same  toward  the  wrong-doer  and 
his  victim!  If  Cain,  if  any  man  Hke  Cain,  the  tyrant, 
the  seducer,  the  defrauder,  the  slanderer,  the  trafficker 
in  iniquity,  if  such  a  man  could  go  on  fearless  and 
triumphing  in  wrong  for  ever!  Ought  a  God  who  is 
Love  to  be  at  peace  with  such  a  man?  Do  not  our 
hope  and  our  strength  in  the  presence  of  wrong  like 
his  come  just  from  the  certainty  that  he  will  be  brought 
soon  or  late  to  face  his  sin,  that  wherever  that  man 
goes,  whatever  his  wealth  may  be,  whatever  his  magni- 
tude or  his  minuteness,  there  is  One  whose  hand  will 
reach  him,  One  who  is  the  relentless  antagonist  of  his 
sin,  and  until  he  repent  and  become  changed  in  spirit 
will  be  his  antagonist  too  ?  God,  because  He  is  Love, 
must  be  righteous.  It  must  be  inherent  in  the 
very  constitution  of  a  universe  created  and  conducted 
by  love,  that  right  shall  be  vindicated  and  that  im- 
penitent wrong  shall  meet  with  the  full  force  of  God's 
antagonism  and  displeasure.  And  it  is  even  so.  It  is 
no  superstition  that  the  blood  of  Abel  cries  to  heaven. 
It  is  an  obstinate,  irreducible  fact  in  the  constitution  of 
the  human  soul.  It  is  a  fact  writ  large  in  the  history 
of  the  world,  of  nations  and  of  men.     When  Abel  is 


THE  BLOOD  OF  ABEL  AND  CHRIST    201 

crushed  in  his  weakness,  ground  down  under  the  heel 
of  the  strong — aye,  when  he  is  dead  and  buried  and 
out  of  mind,  the  voice  of  his  blood  is  mighty  still. 
By  the  cry  of  Israel,  bleeding  through  the  bitter 
enslavement  of  centuries,  the  throne  of  Pharaoh  is 
overturned  and  Egypt's  might  laid  low.  Built  upon 
the  blood  and  bondage  of  weaker  nations,  the  empires 
of  Assyria  and  Babylon  tumble  into  ruin.  French 
revolutions,  American  civil  wars,  Irish  agitations,  all 
tell  the  same  story:  the  wrongs  of  an  oppressed  popu- 
lace rise  from  the  dust  and  claim  redress,  "History," 
says  a  great  historian,  "has  a  Nemesis  for  every  crime." 
And  though  it  may  work  hiddenly,  God's  justice  works 
unerringly.  Such  a  law  is  one  of  the  pillars  of  the 
universe. 

Have  you  and  I  anything  to  do  with  this  law? 
No  brother's  blood  cries  against  us  from  the  ground; 
but  are  there  none  we  have  wronged?  No  tears  we 
have  caused  to  be  shed,  which  God  has  put  into  His 
bottle?  No  hearts  we  have  saddened,  none  whom  we 
have  overreached,  whose  reputation  we  have  wounded 
with  our  tongues,  none  to  whom  we  have  been  unjust 
or  unkind?  Let  us  bethink  ourselves;  for  God  is  the 
avenger  of  all  such.  "If  therefore  thou  layest  thy 
gift  upon  the  altar,  and  there  rememberest  that  thy 
brother  hath  aught  against  thee,  first  go  and  be  recon- 
ciled to  thy  brother."  Confess  your  fault;  offer  your 
apology,  make  amends;  undo  the  wrong  when  you 
can  and  so  far  as  you  can;  then  come  and  offer  thy 
gift. 

The  Old  Testament  speaks  of  a  brother's  blood 
which  cries  to  high  heaven  for  vengeance.     The  New 


202  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

Testament  speaks  of  a  blood  which  has  an  opposite 
virtue,  which  cries  for  mercy,  which  does  not  stain 
but  cleanse — the  "blood  of  sprinkling,"  the  blood  of 
Christ,  that  speaketh  better  things  than  that  of  Abel. 
Here  we  come  upon  one  of  those  wonderful,  uni- 
versal truths  which  are  woven  into  the  warp  and  woof 
of  all  life,  and  which  broaden  out  and  deepen  end- 
lessly as  we  look  at  them.  The  history  of  the  world 
is  written  in  blood ;  and  the  blood  in  which  it  is  written 
throughout  is  of  these  two  kinds,  the  blood  of  Abel 
that  curses  and  the  blood  of  Christ  that  redeems^  and 
saves.  In  all  human  history  we  see  these  two  powers 
contending,  balanced  one  against  the  other — life  that 
is  selfishly  taken  and  life  that  is  unselfishly  given.  In 
all  ages  the  blood  of  Abel  and  his  successors  has  been 
shed;  the  life  of  the  innocent,  the  weak  and  helpless 
has  been  in  every  way  exploited  and  preyed  upon.  It 
has  been  crying  to  heaven  against  the  injustice  and 
ruthlessness  of  man  to  man,  against  the  pride  and 
greed  and  lust  that  have  used  up  the  lives  and  drunk 
the  blood  of  countless  victims,  against  the  callousness 
which  uses  Abel  as  a  mere  tool  which,  when  it  is  blunt 
and  worn  out,  it  throws  without  a  qualm  upon  the 
scrap-heap.  What  a  weight  of  curse  the  blood  of 
all  the  long  generation  of  Abel  has  laid  upon  the  world ! 
And  terribly  has  it  been  expiated.  But  always  blood 
of  a  contrary  quality  and  effect  has  been  flowing  for 
the  redemption  of  the  world.  Consciously  or  un- 
consciously millions  of  men  and  women  have  given 
themselves  for  the  world's  salvation.  When  John 
Williams  fell  under  the  cannibal's  club  on  the  fatal 
shore  of  Erromange,  when  Livingstone  offered  up  his 


THE  BLOOD  OF  ABEL  AND  CHRIST    203 

life  for  Africa,  their  blood  invoked  no  curse,  but 
claimed  for  the  South  Seas  and  the  Dark  Continent 
a  new  era  of  blessing.  Their  self-sacrifice  laid  it  on 
both  God  and  man  to  win  whole  lands  and  nations 
from  darkness  and  savagery  to  Christian  light  and 
freedom.  All  through  the  ages  the  world  has  been 
baptised  and  the  roots  of  human  life  enriched  by  the 
blood  of  patriots,  heroes,  martyrs,  and  by  the  self- 
sacrifice  of  multitudes  of  humble  people  who  have 
made  other  lives  richer  by  their  toil,  sweeter  by  their 
love,  or  nobler  by  their  virtue.  From  the  beginning 
this  crimson  stream  of  self-sacrifice  has  been  running 
with  a  mighty  power  of  help  and  healing  for  the 
sicknesses  of  humanity  and  of  redemption  from  its  sin 
and  curse.  Yet  all  that  sacrificial  blood  shed  from  the 
foundation  of  the  world  could  not  overcome  sin.  It 
could  not  so  relate  itself  to  God  on  the  one  hand  and 
to  the  guilt  of  every  individual  soul  on  the  other 
hand  as  to  give  to  men  the  consciousness  of  a  Divine 
redeeming  power  and  of  restored  harmony  with  the 
moral  order  of  life.     This  needed 

A  sacrifice  of  nobler  name 
And  richer  blood  than  they. 

No  doctrine  is  quite  so  familiar  to  us  as  that  of  the 
atoning  death  of  Christ;  and  there  is  none  upon 
which  it  is  more  difficult  to  rationalise.  When  we 
have  done  our  utmost  to  explore  its  depths,  we  feel 
that  there  is  still  an  unfathomed  deep  beneath.  But 
the  first  thing  that  meets  us  in  that  death  of  Calvary 
is  that  in  some  way  we  are  all  directly  related  to  it 
as  to  no  other.    Wq  feel  instinctively  of  Christ  as  of  no 


204  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

other,  that  He  tasted  death  for  every  man.  The  sacri- 
fice of  Calvary  is  not  a  mere  fact  of  history.  Christ's 
cross  is  ours ;  His  infinite  sorrows  and  dying  pangs  are 
ours.  That  is  the  heart  of  Christianity.  It  is  that 
faith,  that  consciousness  of  Christ,  which  created  Chris- 
tianity, and  which  is  forever  its  Hfe  and  the  source 
of  its  power.  And  I  wish  to  speak  for  a  few  minutes 
more  of  two  elements  which  are  most  surely  con- 
tained in  this  Christian  consciousness  of  Christ  and 
His  sacrificial  blood. 

First,  there  is  this,  that  Christian  faith  finds  in  the 
Blood  of  Christ  the  unique  act  and  manifestation  of 
the  love,  that  is  the  life,  of  God.  I  have  said  that 
sacrificial  blood  has  been  shed  from  the  beginning  of 
the  world  in  the  unselfish  toils  and  sorrows  and  sacri- 
fices of  millions.  Wherein,  you  may  ask,  is  the  sacri- 
fice of  Christ  different  except  in  degree?  Wherein 
is  this  redemptive  any  otherwise  than  every  loving 
deed  by  which  men  seek  a  wider  and  higher  good 
than  their  own?  Well,  for  the  present,  I  am  content 
to  answer  in  the  words  of  St.  Paul :  "God  commendeth 
his  love  towards  us,  in  that  while  we  were  yet  sinners 
Christ  died  for  us."  Every  Christian  soul  feels  in- 
stinctively how  impossible  it  would  be  to  substitute 
another  name  for  Christ's  in  that  sentence,  io  say, 
for  example,  that  God  commended  his  love  towards 
the  people  of  Africa  because  while  they  were  yet 
sinners  David  Livingstone  died  for  them.  God's 
love,  Christ's  death — these  are  equivalent  terms.  Some 
of  the  early  Fathers  of  the  Church  were  thought 
to  be  too  daring,  if  not  heretical,  because  they  spoke 
of  the  Blood  of  the  Cross  as  the  Blood  of  God.     I 


THE  BLOOD  OF  ABEL  AND  CHRIST    205 

should  not  be  anxious  to  acquit  myself  of  their  heresy. 
To  me  the  Cross  of  Calvary  is  the  manifestation  in  our 
humanity,  in  His  Son  Jesus  Christ,  of  the  Cross  of 
God,  that  cross  of  suffering,  sorrowing  love  with  which 
the  sins  and  follies  of  men  have  pierced  and  still 
pierce  the  heart  of  the  Eternal.  That  is  what  the 
Gospel  means.  It  takes  us  to  Bethlehem,  to  Geth- 
semane;  it  shows  us  One  nailed  to  a  cross  for  us, 
burdening  Himself  with  all  our  burdens,  pouring  out 
in  death  His  infinite  love  and  pity  for  us,  and  says  to 
us,  "God  so  loved  the  world."  I  am  not  going  to  argue 
about  it.  But  it  is  this  that  is  ingrained  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  every  Christian  soul;  that  changes  the 
soul's  winter  into  summer,  that  means  everlasting  hope 
for  every  one  of  us  and  for  all  the  world. 

Because,  from  this  springs  the  second  unique  power 
in  the  Blood  of  Christ,  that  it  is  the  "blood  of  sprink- 
ling"; it  cleanses  from  sin;  it  breaks  the  bonds  in 
which  sin  binds  us;  and  as  the  blood  of  Abel  destroys, 
the  Blood  of  Christ  restores  the  harmony  of  our  sinful 
lives  with  the  moral  order  of  the  universe  established 
and  maintained  by  God.  That  is  the  primal  and 
universal  need;  and  it  is  that  utmost  human  need 
which  finds  God's  utmost  grace  in  the  Blood  of  Christ. 
I  do  not  attempt  to  argue  or  theorise.  I  say  only 
that  this  is  in  the  heart  of  all  Christian  faith.  But 
this  I  would  ask:  Have  we  ever  tried  to  think  how 
stupendous  a  belief  this  is?  Have  we  considered  what 
that  word,  Atonement,  means — how  incalculable  and 
almost  incredible  a  virtue  this  is  we  attribute  to  the 
Blood  of  Christ,  the  power  really  to  atone,  to  make 
amends  to  God  and  to  man  for  all  the  evil  that  has 


2o6  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

been  done  or  ever  will  be  done,  for  all  the  sin  of  all 
the  men  and  women  who  have  sinned  against  God 
and  man  from  the  beginning,  and  will  so  sin  unto  the 
end  of  the  ages?  Christ  atones  for  everything.  Christ 
makes  up  for  everything,  makes  up  to  God,  to  man,  for 
everything.  I  cannot  tell  you  how  that  is  to  be,  how 
God  in  time  and  eternity  is  working  out  the  results 
of  that  atonement,  both  towards  Himself  and  towards 
our  fellowmen  and  in  the  whole  universe  of  being. 
But  this  is  the  Christian  faith,  that  in  Him  we  have 
redemption  through  His  Blood,  and  that  in  Him  God 
will  reconcile  all  things  unto  Himself,  and  if  to  Him- 
self then  also  to  one  another.  And  I  believe  that  when 
a  man's  conscience  is  fully  awakened  to  the  character 
of  sin,  this  is  the  only  sufficient  refuge  for  him.  This 
is  the  Rock  whose  shadow  is  salvation.  And  I  know 
that  he  who  so  trusts  himself  to  Christ  will  have  the 
witness  in  himself. 

^A  young  woman  who  had  lived  a  life  of  sin  lay 
dying  in  a  hospital.  Some  one  had  read  to  her  the 
fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah:  "He  was  wounded  for 
our  transgressions ;  he  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities'' ; 
and  through  these  words  she  had  believed  in  the  love 
of  Christ  to  her  a  sinner.  Her  friends  stood  by  wait- 
ing for  the  end,  when  suddenly  she  pushed  a  thin 
hand  from  under  the  coverlet  and,  pointing  to  it  with  a 
finger  of  the  other  hand,  said,  "Ther^  is  no  mark  of  the 
nails  here;  He  was  wounded  for  my  transgressions." 
Then  again  she  lay  silent,  until  once  more  the  hands 
moved,  and  putting  them  to  her  brow,  she  said,  "There 


^The  incident  is  told  by  Henry  Drummond. 


THE  BLOOD  OF  ABEL  AND  CHRIST    207 

are  no  thorns  here;  He  was  bruised  for  my  iniquities." 
Again  she  was  still,  so  still  they  thought  her  gone. 
But  a  third  time  she  looked  up,  and  clasping  her  hands 
across  her  breast,  said,  *There  is  no  spear-wound 
here ;  He  was  wounded  for  my  transgressions ;  He  was 
bruised  for  my  iniquities."  Then  she  passed  away, 
having  the  witness  of  God's  peace  in  herself. 

Yes,  the  Blood  of  sprinkling  speaketh  better  things 
than  that  of  Abel.  Do  some  of  you  hear  accusing 
voices  in  your  conscience?  Listen  to  that  other  voice, 
which  outcries  and  drowns  all  accusing  voices.  Have 
many  of  us  listened  to  both  these  voices?  Then  let 
us  remember  what  we  owe;  and,  absolved  from  the 
paralysing  debt  of  sin,  let  us  gladly  pay  with  our 
whole  life  the  never-ending  debt  of  love. 


XVII 

The  Grand  Adventure 

He  went  out,  not  knowing  whither  he  went. — Heb.  ii :  8. 

"England  was  never  made  by  her  statesmen;  Eng- 
land was  made  by  her  adventurers,"  says  General  Gor- 
don, himself  one  of  that  lion-hearted  band;  and  if  we 
qualify  it  by  adding  that  there  are  adventurers  in  every 
region  of  human  thought  and  activity,  the  statement 
is  true.  Not  the  men  who  are  fettered  by  precedent 
and  tradition,  who  sit  timidly  brooding  over  ways  and 
means  or  who  busy  themselves  in  raking  the  embers 
of  dead  fires,  but  those  who  have  heard  a  call  from 
afar,  who  have  felt  the  stir  of  some  divine  impulse  in 
their  souls,  and  like  Abraham,  the  father  and  pattern 
of  all  such  adventurers,  have  gone  out  not  knowing 
whither  they  went,  are  the  men  who  have  made  not 
the  British  Empire  only,  but  everything  great  and  good 
that  is  the  common  heritage  of  mankind.  And  we  are 
all  in  some  sense  adventurers.  Life  is  one  great  ad- 
venture, and  Death  is  another,  from  which  none  of  us 
can  escape.  And  what  Gordon  said  of  England  may 
be  said  of  Life,  that  they  will  make  most  of  it  and  get 
the  best  out  of  it  who  treat  it  as  an  adventure,  who  take 
it  in  the  spirit  of  those  who  walk  not  by  narrow  calcu- 
lation but  by  faith. 

There  are  three  ways  in  which  the  Journey  of  Life 
208 


THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE  209 

may  present  itself  to  us.  The  first  is,  when  the  goal 
is  in  sight  and  when  also  the  way  to  it  seems  to  be  in 
sight;  to  travel  by  schedule  and  programme  as  we  do 
on  a  railway  journey,  when  we  can  foretell  what 
scenes  we  shall  pass  through  at  a  particular  part  of 
the  road,  where  we  shall  make  our  connections,  and 
by  what  route  and  at  what  time  we  shall  reach  the 
terminus.  It  is  in  this  fashion  we  like  to  travel,  fore- 
seeing and  prearranging  the  successive  stages  of  the 
journey,  saying :  "To-day  or  to-morrow  we  will  go  into 
such  a  city,  and  continue  there  a  year,  and  buy  and 
sell  and  get  gain."  And  we  must  scheme  and  purpose 
thus.  We  must  lay  out  our  own  little  plan  of  Hfe  within 
the  orbit  of  God's  great  plan,  construct  our  Httle  world 
of  human  prudence  within  the  great  world  of  God's 
Providence — to  do  anything  else  would  be  to  live  the 
life  of  an  idiot.  Still,  remember,  it  is  an  adventure; 
if  not  of  faith,  then  of  doubt.  When  men  plan  and 
purpose  as  if  they  had  absolute  control  over  events, 
over  other  men,  or  even  over  themselves,  they  make 
themselves  but  a  broader  target  for  the  shafts  of  fate. 
How  history  has  been  preaching  that  to  us!  How 
eighteen  months  ago,  as  at  a  thunderclap,  the  whole 
aspect  of  life  was  transformed,  all  preconceived  ideas 
went  by  the  board  and  the  incredible  stood  before  us  in 
stark  reality !  And  none  have  been  so  much  taken  by 
surprise  as  those  who  planned  the  surprise.  The  Kaiser 
and  his  staff  saw  their  Canaan  of  world-empire  full  in 
view,  and,  as  they  deemed,  the  way  to  it  also  lay  before 
them  distinct  as  a  diagram.  Theirs  was  no  Abrahamic 
adventure.  On  such  and  such  a  week  at  Paris — their 
heel  on  the  neck  of   France — the   sudden   ^ring  at 


2IO  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

Russia's  throat;  the  war  was  over,  and  Germany  be- 
striding the  world  like  a  colossus!  And  all  that  the 
astutest  brains  could  devise  and  the  most  perfect  organ- 
isation in  the  world  execute  was  wrecked  on  an  un- 
charted rock.  Just  one  or  two  tiny  bits  of  grit  getting 
into  the  mechanism  deranged  the  whole  diabolical  plot. 
And  to-day  Germany  is  like  a  great  fish  caught  in  the 
toils  of  a  strong  net,  within  which  it  may  rush  and 
plunge  mightily,  even  to  breaking  some  of  the  meshes, 
but  from  which  it  cannot  escape.  Seldom  has  history 
written  so  vivid  a  commentary  on  that  grim  saying  of 
the  Psalmist :  He  that  sitteth  in  the  heavens  shall  laugh. 
If  we  can  conceive  of  a  kind  of  derisive  humour  in  the 
Most  High,  it  must  surely  be  excited  when  He  sees  men 
or  nations  laying  out  their  future  without  reference  to 
Him.  And  whether  there  be  a  God  or  not,  and  whether 
we  acknowledge  Him  or  not,  we  must  at  any  rate  go 
forth  not  knowing  whither  we  go.  Beyond  the  spot 
where  we  now  plant  our  feet  the  road  is  all  mist;  and 
without  the  vision  of  God  in  it,  life  is  little  else  than  a 
gambler's  throw  of  the  dice.  Yet  this,  the  mere  impos- 
sibility of  eliminating  the  factor  of  the  unforeseen  and 
unforeseeable,  does  not  constitute  the  great,  high  ad- 
venture of  life. 

Then,  again,  the  goal  may  be  visible,  but  not  the 
way  to  it.  A  man  has  a  fairly  clear  idea  of  the  kind 
of  happiness  or  success  he  desires  to  achieve.  There, 
visible  enough,  is  the  peak  he  wants  to  scale ;  but  there 
is  no  map  or  telescope  by  which  he  can  certainly  trace 
the  way  to  the  summit.  He  can  but  begin  to  climb, 
looking  a  short  way  ahead,  trusting  that  when  he  has 
reached  yonder  eminence  or  worked  his  way  round  that 


THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE  211 

rock-barrier,,  the  next  stage  of  the  ascent  will  discover 
itself  to  him.  It  is  thus  the  world's  successful  man 
accomplishes  the  journey — the  goal  clear  in  view  from 
the  beginning,  the  path  opening  itself  up  to  his  watchful 
observation  and  patient  effort.  And  no  one  will  deny 
that  this  has  a  spice  of  romance  in  it.  Every  man  who 
has  had  his  dream  and  has  realized  it,  or  who  has 
failed  to  realize  it,  has  had  at  least  his  adventure ;  and 
in  many  a  case  the  adventure  proves  to  be  worth  a 
great  deal  more  than  the  success,  or  is  more  than  com- 
pensation for  the  failure. 

Yet  if  the  journey  ends  at  any  visible  goal,  if  the 
whole  lies  within  the  region  of  sense  and  calculation, 
neither  is  this  the  true  adventure  of  life.  That  comes 
to  men  when  both  the  goal  is  beyond  the  horizon  and 
the  way  to  it  lies  unexplored  and  unseen.  Such  is  the 
journeying  of  all  the  great  adventurers.  They  set  off 
into  regions  unknown,  impelled  by  some  mysterious 
instinct  of  the  soul,  following  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day 
and  of  fire  by  night  which  no  eye  but  theirs  might  see. 
Tireless  seekers  of  the  unfound,  they  would  voyage 
"beyond  the  sunset  and  the  baths  of  all  the  western 
stars";  or,  like  Columbus,  set  sail  for  what  to  them- 
selves was  but  a  dream,  trusting  the  voice  within  that 
by  holding  on  and  ever  on  they  would  sail  at  last 
into  some  new  world.  And  such  men  are  types  of  the 
true  adventurers,  the  men  of  religious  faith.  For,  has 
it  ever  occurred  to  you  that  if  all  life  is  more  or  less 
an  adventure,  its  greatest,  sublimest  adventure  is  what 
we  call  religion — that  religion  is  the  essential  romance 
of  life?  That  is  what  I  wish  to  help  you  to  feel  this 
morning.     That  is  what  the  lives  of  all  the  saints 


212  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

reveal  to  us.    It  is  what  this  story  of  Abraham  is  here 
to  teach  us. 

That  departure  of  Abraham  from  his  kindred  and 
his  father's  house — you  can  see  it  all  before  your  eyes : 
the  laden  camels  slowly  pacing,  towering  above  the 
bleating  flocks,  the  cries  of  the  drovers,  the  wail  of 
women's  voices  as  they  cling  to  their  loved  ones  before 
parting  forever,  the  silent  hand-clasp  of  strong  men 
whose  eyes  glisten  with  unshed  tears — then  the  long 
march  begun,  while  those  who  stay  behind  strain  wist- 
ful eyes  across  the  broad  flood  of  Euphrates  until  the 
departing  caravan  is  lost  in  a  haze  of  dust  on  the  far 
horizon.  It  is  in  any  case  a  romantic  scene,  the  start 
of  a  high  adventure.  But  what  makes  it  supremely  so? 
That  Abraham  went  out  by  an  unknown  way  in  quest 
of  an  unknown  heritage?  Thousands  of  men  have 
done  as  much.  Had  it  been  some  wealthy  syndicate  that 
despatched  Abraham  to  Canaan  with  the  promise  of 
a  goodly  estate  in  it ;  had  he  gone,  placing  his  reliance 
on  the  rose-coloured  report  of  some  emigration-agent 
or  the  prospectus  of  a  real  estate  company,  we  should 
never  have  heard  of  so  ordinary  an  occurrence.  But 
because  it  was  not  men  he  believed  but  God,  because 
he  fared  forth  on  his  great  adventure  in  response  to 
that  voice  which  he  knew  to  be  the  voice  of  God,  there- 
fore his  journey  is  held  up  to  us  not  as  an  everyday 
matter,  but  as  an  event  of  real  moment  and  grandeur. 
Nothing  more  romantic  can  be  conceived;  for  what 
is  the  soul  of  all  romance  but  just  faith,  faith  in  a 
person,  faith  in  a  cause,  in  an  ideal  or  a  mission? 
And  is  not  the  highest  romance  the  highest  faith — 
faith  in  the  unseen  God  and  the  divine  ideal  of  life, 


THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE  213 

faith  in  the  sovereignty  of  God  and  the  coming  King- 
dom of  God,  faith  in  the  divine  mission  for  each 
of  us  to  Hve  for  that  ideal  and  to  seek  first  that 
kingdom  ? 

And  it  is  to  this  that  Christ  makes  His  supreme 
appeal.  He  appeals  to  the  intellect,  but  yet  more  to 
that  instinctive  side  of  our  nature  which  is  higher 
than  intellect,  to  the  spiritual  imagination,  to  the 
chivalrous  emotions,  to  the  spirit  of  adventure — in 
a  word,  to  Faith.  He  came  himself  with  nothing  but 
an  infinite  faith  in  God  and  God's  redeeming  love. 
He  came  in  that  faith  wedded  to  the  infinite  adven- 
ture of  bringing  to  the  world  the  Kingdom  of  God's 
redeeming  love.  And  in  seeking  to  draw  others  into 
the  same  adventure  He  did  not  appeal  primarily  to 
the  intellect.  He  refused  to  capture  allegiance  by 
signs,  but  sought  to  fill  and  impassion  men  with  His 
own  glowing  faith  in  God  and  the  coming  Kingdom 
and  its  new  ideal  of  life.  His  call  is  the  call  of  faith 
to  faith,  of  the  "deep"  in  Him  to  the  "deep"  in  others, 
a  call  to  supreme  adventure.  The  whole  Gospel-story 
moves  in  this  atmosphere  of  spiritual  romance.  How 
romantic  is  that  scene  where  we  witness  the  beginning 
of  the  Church — the  great  Society — where  Jesus,  walk- 
ing on  the  shore,  comes  to  those  fishermen  busy  with 
their  nets,  and  says,  "Follow  me,  and  I  will  make  you 
fishers  of  men."  Though  they  know  little,  next  to  noth- 
ing, of  what  that  "following"  means  and  whither  it  will 
lead  them,  they  hear  in  it  the  same  voice  Abraham 
heard,  and  without  a  word  obey.  And  when  later  He 
adds  to  this  "Follow  me"  "Take  up  thy  cross :  hate 
father  and  mother,  wife  and  children,  home  and  lands 


214  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

and  thine  own  life  also,"  this  is  not  to  damp  but  only 
to  fan  to  a  deeper  and  steady  glow  the  spirit  of  daring 
enterprise,  to  lure  men  on  by  the  incentives  of  difficulty 
and  antagonism. 

And  so,  I  repeat.  Religion,  faith  in  the  Divine 
and  Eternal,  is  the  essential  romance  of  man's  life 
here  on  earth,  the  one  sublime  adventure  offered 
to  us  all.  Always  the  greatest  exploits  of  human 
life,  the  most  moving  episodes  of  human  action, 
are  those  in  which  men  are  seen  dealing  in  the 
greatest  way  with  the  greatest  circumstances;  and 
these  greatest  circumstances  are  the  same  for  us 
all — God,  Duty,  Life,  Death.  Without  stirring  from 
the  spot  where  you  are  you  may  traverse  the  vastest 
distances,  make  the  most  momentous  discoveries — win 
or  lose  the  most  decisive  battles.  Is  it  a  romantic 
thing  when  a  man  sets  out  to  reach  the  Pole  or  climb 
some  virgin  peak  of  the  Rockies  or  the  Himalayas? 
What  then  is  it  to  fix  one's  mark  beyond  the  world, 
beyond  life,  beyond  death;  to  set  out  on  a  journey  to 
the  Eternal  City?  Is  it  a  romantic  thing  for  our 
young  men  to  leave  all  and  go  forth  with  their  lives 
in  their  hands  in  order  to  fight  our  battle  against  the 
enemies  of  civilization?  Verily  it  is  an  ennobling 
spectacle  to  see  so  many  capable  of  putting  a  great 
and  generous  cause  above  comfort  and  career,  deal- 
ing thus  simply  and  heroically  with  the  greatest 
things,  God,  Duty,  Life,  Death.  But  these  greatest 
things  are  not  far  from  any  one  of  us.  Not  only  the 
soldier  who  in  the  testing  hour  looks  death  unflinch- 
ingly in  the  face;  the  poor  sempstress  in  the  cheap 
boarding-house  who  refuses  to  eke  out  a  scanty  pittance 


THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE  215 

with  the  wages  of  sin;  the  youth  who  turns  his  back 
on  tempting  worldly  prospects  to  devote  his  life  to  the 
service  of  the  Gospel  at  home  or  abroad;  the  poli- 
tician who  unselfishly  serves  the  community  and  in 
spite  of  opportunities  and  solicitations  keeps  his  hands 
clean;  the  merchant  who  amid  the  fierce  rivalries  of 
the  market-place  refuses  to  stoop  to  the  practices  of 
unscrupulous  competitors;  the  poor  content  in  their 
poverty,  the  rich  humble  in  their  wealth,  because 
God  is  theirs;  the  white-lipped  sufferer  bearing  the 
cross  of  daily  pain,  so  weak  and  worn,  yet  like  the 
Master  meekly  drinking  the  cup  the  Father  has  given : 
in  these  and  such  as  these,  in  all  who  on  the  level 
plain  of  daily  life  follow  Christ,  and  on  earth  aim 
at  Heaven,  I  see  the  grand  romance  of  life.  So  does 
Christ  call  us  to  follow  Him.  He  would  appeal  to  us 
and  thrill  us  with  the  sense  of  supreme  adventure, 
with  a  high-hearted,  courageous  temper,  ready  in  His 
strength   for  whatever  may  come. 

And  then,  think  how  He  helps  to  awaken  this  spirit 
in  us  by  the  very  uncertainty  of  the  future,  or  rather, 
I  ought  to  say,  by  that  combination  of  certainty 
and  uncertainty,  which  makes  life  not  a  reckless 
gamble  but  the  adventure  of  faith.  Abraham  went 
out  not  knowing  whither  he  went;  but  God  knew. 
Abraham  did  not  plan  the  journey;  God  planned  it  and 
prepared  for  it,  and  when  Abraham  went  forth  at 
God's  command  he  entered  into  God's  plan  and  prepara- 
tion. And  I  put  it  to  you  that  this  same  wonderful 
possibility  exists  for  each  of  us.  I  put  it  to  you  that 
not  one  of  us  comes  into  this  world  by  haphazard, 
or  to  live  a  haphazard  life  in  it.    Every  one  of  us  has 


2i6  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

a  divine  biography  which  he  comes  into  Hfe  to  live, 
a  way  and  an  end  which  is  the  good  intended  for  him, 
which  it  is  his  privilege  to  reach,  which  he  is  called  to 
reach,  which  he  ought  to  reach,  and  which,  if  only 
he  put  his  will  in  line  with  God's,  God  will  guide  him 
and  strengthen  him  to  reach.  ^ 

Try  to  take  firm  hold  of  that  thought  of  your  divine 
biography.  As  we  follow  with  lively  interest  some 
skilfully  woven  tale,  eager  at  the  end  of  each  chapter 
to  learn  through  what  further  experiences  and  adven- 
tures the  author  will  next  carry  the  creatures  of  his 
fancy,  so  how  inspiring,  how  interesting — or  romantic, 
shall  I  say  ? — it  would  make  our  own  lives  so  to  regard 
them ;  to  say  to  ourselves  at  each  critical  turning-point. 
Now  I  shall  see  what  the  next  chapter  of  my  biography 
is  destined  to  be ;  year  by  year,  or  day  by  day,  to  say, 
Let  me  learn  another  line  of  the  part  the  Great  Drama- 
tist has  written  for  me;  let  me  discover  what  task  he 
intends  for  me,  what  battle  to  be  fought,  or  long  stretch 
of  quiet  work  to  be  done.  Ah !  did  we  regard  life  thus, 
as  the  divine  adventure  it  is,  it  would  change  many 
things  for  us,  and  alter  many  values.  In  some  respects 
we  should  take  life  more  seriously  than  we  do ;  in  others, 
less  seriously.  More  seriously  because  it  is  that  awful 
adventure  by  which  we  stand  to  win  or  lose  all;  less 
seriously  because  it  is  only  an  adventure,  a  passing 
phase.  To  think  of  life  so  will  give  it  a  new  dignity, 
a  new  serenity.  It  will  teach  you  a  new  contentment ; 
it  will  choke  out  the  folly  of  envy  and  jealous  com- 


^This  thought  is  finely  developed  in  Bushnell's  great  sermon, 
"Every  man's  life  a  plan  of  God." 


THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE  217 

plaining.  And  it  will  inspire  a  new  courage.  We 
shall  never  stand  timidly  and  forebodingly  on  the 
brink  of  the  task  or  the  sacrifice  before  us,  but  only 
tighten  our  hold  on  God  and  go  forward. 

And,  further,  God  is  seeking  to  awaken  this  spirit 
in  us  by  the  nature  of  the  times  in  which  we  are  living. 
For  truly  we  and  all  the  world  go  out  to-day  not 
knowing  whither  we  go.  We  thought  we  knew,  knew 
very  well,  whither  we  were  going.  We  were  living  in 
a  calm  and  peaceful  world ;  no  catastrophe  was  on  the 
horizon,  there  was  no  great  fear  or  expectation  to  keep 
us  on  the  alert.  We  had  forgotten  much  of  what  is  the 
teaching  alike  of  the  Gospel  and  of  history.  We  be- 
lieved thoroughly  in  the  parables  of  the  Mustard-seed 
and  of  the  Leaven — the  Gospel  of  evolution;  we  be- 
lieved in  the  parable  of  the  Talents — the  Gospel  of 
work ;  but  we  had  ceased  to  believe  in  the  parable  of  the 
Ten  Virgins — the  Gospel  of  divine  interventions  and 
surprises.  We  were  worshipping  an  idol  we  called 
Progress,  with  no  very  clear  idea  of  what  we  meant 
by  progress — progress  in  what  or  toward  what  end 
— with  just  a  vaguely  optimistic  notion  that  to- 
morrow would  be  as  to-day  but  more  abundant; 
that  there  would  be  more  people,  more  trade,  more 
money,  more  science,  more  comfort,  more  respecta- 
bility, even  more  religion;  that  things  would  move 
on,  very  slowly  and  gradually,  yet  on  the  whole 
in  the  right  direction.  And,  as  was  natural  in  such 
an  atmosphere.  Religion  was  falling  asleep.  In  how 
terrible  and  dramatic  fashion,  God  has  disturbed 
our  drowsiness  and  shattered  our  dreams!  We 
have    lived    to    witness    what    seems    an    eclipse    of 


2i8  THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE 

civilization.  We  have  been  confronted  with  the  spec- 
tacle of  dying  men — flowing  blood  and  burning  cities, 
and  have  learned  what  it  means  to  stand  in  jeopardy 
every  hour.  We  have  seen  how  powerless  our  idols, 
Progress,  Culture,  Comfort,  are  to  tame  the  worst 
passions  of  humanity,  and  how  a  civilisation  which 
is  of  things  rather  than  of  spirit  becomes  the  instru- 
ment of  death,  not  of  life.  We  are  living  through 
one  of  those  days  of  the  Lord  when  He  comes  as  a 
fire  to  burn  out  the  wood,  hay,  stubble,  the  rubbish  and 
the  rottenness,  the  greed  and  the  laziness  and  the 
frivolity,  from  the  edifice  of  society.  Oh!  it  was 
needed.  We  thought  we  knew  whither  we  were  going ; 
and  a  spirit  of  complacency  and  self-indulgence  had 
come  upon  us.  The  mist  was  in  our  eyes,  and  the 
torpor  was  falling  upon  our  limbs.  Thank  God,  the 
awakening  has  not  come  altogether  too  late.  And 
now  when  we  know  that  we  know  not  what  a  day 
may  bring  forth,  we  are  all  the  more  confident  of  the 
future,  because  more  dependent  on  God.  He  has 
taken  away  our  shoddy  optimism  to  light  in  us  a  sure 
and  living  hope.  A  new  and  better  chapter  in  the 
world's  history  is  to  be  written.  What  its  contents  will 
be  none  can  tell,  though  there  be  many  prophets.  But 
this  we  know,  that  Christ  will  write  it  and  that  His 
Glory  will  be  manifested  in  it.  It  may  be,  it  surely 
must  be,  that  He  will  grant  us  some  great,  true  revival 
of  spiritual  life.  It  may  be  that  He  will  lead  the  way  to 
social  improvements  and  throw  light  upon  the  ques- 
tion, how  rich  and  poor  may  dwell  together  in  cordial 
and  helpful  brotherhood.  It  may  be  that  He  will  bring 
to  the  sects  of  our  divided  Christendom  a  new  realisa- 


THE  GRAND  ADVENTURE  219 

tion  of  their  unity.  It  may  be  that  He  will  spread  the 
mantle  of  His  peace  over  the  nations  and  persuade 
them  to  cease  hating  and  fearing  one  another,  and  to 
live  in  a  rivalry  of  friendliness  and  mutual  service. 
It  may  be  this,  it  may  be  that,  perhaps  all  of  these. 
We  know  only  that  with  a  world  that  so  pitifully  needs 
Christ,  and  with  a  Christ  who  knows  its  needs  and 
loves  it  and  so  tenderly  pities  its  needs,  there  must 
be  some  coming  of  the  Lord,  some  closer  approach 
of  His  Hfe  to  the  world's  life. 

Therefore  let  us,  like  Abraham,  take  up  courageously 
the  adventure  of  life;  let  us  go  forth  not  knowing 
whither,  but  ready  to  enter  into  God's  plan  for  the 
world  and  for  ourselves  as  it  unfolds  itself.  These 
are  great  days  in  which  we  live,  fraught  with  tremen- 
dous issues;  and  before  us  there  are  great  days  in 
which  we  may  have  abundantly  the  joy  of  adventure 
for  God,  and  the  joy  of  achievement.  Let  our  loins 
be  girt  and  our  lamps  burning. 


Date  Due 

■ 

-U. 

^,.ahk*s««'^*'^»^ 

w*.«*f. 

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